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A queer feeling of relief and gladness swept over Tyler. And then Moran looked sharply at the girl and said, “Why, hello, Blanche!”

“Hello yourself,” answered the girl, sullenly.

“Thought you was in ‘Frisco.”

“Well, I ain’t.”

Moran shifted his attention from the girl to Tyler. “Friend o’ yours?”

Before Tyler could open his lips to answer the girl put in, “Sure he is. Sure I am. We been around together all afternoon.”

Tyler jerked. “Why, ma’am, I guess you’ve made a mistake. I never saw you before in my life. I kind of thought when you up and spoke to me you must be taking me for somebody else. Well, now, isn’t that funny–“

The smile faded from the girl’s face, and it became twisted with fury. She glared at Moran, her lips drawn back in a snarl. “Who’re you to go buttin’ into my business! This guy’s a friend of mine, I tell yuh!”

“Yeh? Well, he’s a friend of mine, too. Me an’ him had a date to meet here right now and we’re goin’ over to a swell little dance on Michigan Avenoo. So it’s you who’s buttin’ in, Blanche, me girl.”

The girl stood twisting her handkerchief savagely. She was panting a little. “I’ll get you for this.”

“Beat it!” said Moran. He tucked his arm through Tyler’s, with a little impelling movement, and Tyler found himself walking up the street at a smart gait, leaving the girl staring after them.

Tyler Kamps was an innocent, but he was not a fool. At what he had vaguely guessed a moment before, he now knew. They walked along in silence, the most ill-sorted pair that you might hope to find in all that higgledy-piggledy city. And yet with a new, strong bond between them. It was more than fraternal. It had something of the character of the feeling that exists between a father and son who understand each other.

Man-like, they did not talk of that which they were thinking.

Tyler broke the silence.

“Do you dance?”

“Me! Dance! Well, I’ve mixed with everything from hula dancers to geisha girls, not forgettin’ the Barbary Coast in the old days, but–well, I ain’t what you’d rightly call a dancer. Why you askin’?”

“Because I can’t dance, either. But we’ll just go up and see what it’s like, anyway.”

“See wot wot’s like?”

Tyler took out his card again, patiently. “This dance we’re going to.”

They had reached the Michigan Avenue address given on the card, and Tyler stopped to look up at the great, brightly lighted building. Moran stopped too, but for a different reason. He was staring, open-mouthed, at Tyler Kamps.

“You mean t’ say you thought I was goin’–“

He choked. “Oh, my Gawd!”

Tyler smiled at him, sweetly. “I’m kind of scared, too. But Monicker goes to these dances and he says they’re right nice. And lots of–of pretty girls. Nice girls. I wouldn’t go alone. But you–you’re used to dancing, and parties and–girls.”

He linked his arm through the other man’s. Moran allowed himself to be propelled along, dazedly. Still protesting, he found himself in the elevator with a dozen red-cheeked, scrubbed-looking jackies. At which point Moran, game in the face of horror, accepted the inevitable. He gave a characteristic jerk from the belt.

“Me, I’ll try anything oncet. Lead me to it.”

The elevator stopped at the ninth floor. “Out here for the jackies’ dance,” said the elevator boy.

The two stepped out with the others. Stepped out gingerly, caps in hand. A corridor full of women. A corridor a-flutter with girls. Talk. Laughter. Animation. In another moment the two would have turned and fled, terrified. But in that half-moment of hesitation and bewilderment they were lost.

A woman approached them hand outstretched. A tall, slim, friendly looking woman, low-voiced, silk-gowned, inquiring.

“Good-evening!” she said, as if she had been haunting the halls in the hope of their coming. “I’m glad to see you. You can check your caps right there. Do you dance?”

Two scarlet faces. Four great hands twisting at white caps in an agony of embarrassment. “Why, no ma’am.”