“ ‘Aha!’ says I, ‘a new one.’ Without loss of time I proceed to skirmish. The enemy ignores me. I advance right up to the fortifications. Still no sign. I prepare to turn loose with my artillery, and at that point am interrupted by Dumain and Jennings entering the lobby.

“As soon as they observe me they hasten up with reenforcements. ‘Who is it?’ says Jennings. ‘The Queen of Egypt,’ says I, ‘and no time to be lost.’ Then we begin in earnest.

“Dumain had a roll — some rich guy wanted to find out who to give it to (you know, Dumain’s a palmist) — and that day we must have sent something like five million telegrams, having found her silent on all other topics. It wasn’t easy. Did you ever try to write a telegram when you had nothing to say and nobody to say it to? And still we never got across the trenches. It went something like this:

“ ‘How much?’ says I, handing over for the ninth time a telegram to my brother in Trenton, telling him I was well and hoping he was the same.

“ ‘Sixty cents,’ says the Queen of Egypt.

“ ‘Now,’ says I, ‘that’s what I don’t like. I don’t mind paying out five for a dinner or tickets to a show, but I do hate to spend money on telegrams. But as I say, I’d just as soon buy tickets to a show as not — any show.’

“ ‘Sixty cents,’ says the Queen of Egypt.

“ ‘And so far as dinner is concerned — why, I hardly consider ten dollars too much for a good dinner,’ says I.

“ ‘Sixty cents, please,’ says she.

“And that was the way it went all day. Not a word could we get. It appeared to be hopeless. Jennings got disgusted.

“ ‘You’ve made a mistake, Dougherty,’ says he. ‘She belongs to Egypt all right, but she’s not the queen. She’s the Sphinx.’ I was inclined to agree with him.

“The time passed quicker than we thought. We were sitting over in the corner, trying to think up one more telegram, when we heard somebody stop right in front of us. It was the Queen of Egypt, with her hat and coat on, ready to go home. Before we could say a word she spoke.

“ ‘Gentlemen,’ she says, ‘you must pardon me for speaking to you. I do it because I believe you are gentlemen. I suppose you have been trying to joke with me today; and I am sure that when I tell you it disturbs me and makes me unhappy, you will promise not to do it any more. For if you continue, I must give up my position.’

“You can imagine — maybe — how we felt. Dumain stammered something, and I choked, and the next minute we saw the door close behind her. I guess she realized our condition.

“Well, the next day we had to catch Booth and train him. And the day after that, Sherman. He was the hardest of all. About every day it happens that some stranger suddenly finds himself de trop, though we don’t usually interfere unless he insists. And now you get us. She is no longer the Queen of Egypt. She is Miss Lila Williams — which is to say, she’s better than any queen.”

“But still,” persisted Driscoll, “by what right do you interfere with me?”

“Well,” Dougherty appeared to reflect, “perhaps none. But there’s one or two things we’ve found out that I haven’t told you. One is that she has no father or mother. She’s all alone.

“Very well. One thing a mother does is this: if some guy comes round with a meaning eye, she hauls him up short. She says to him: ‘Who are you, and what are you good for, and what are your intentions?’ Well, that’s us. As far as that part of it’s concerned, we’re mama.”

“But I have no intentions,” said Driscoll.

“That’s just the point. You have no intentions. Then hands off.”

Dougherty at this point glanced aside at a shout from the billiard players. When he turned back he found Driscoll standing before him with outstretched hand.

“You’re on,” said Driscoll briefly. “Shake.”

“You’re a gentleman,” said Dougherty, grasping the hand.

“And now — will you introduce me to Miss Williams?”

Dougherty looked somewhat taken aback.

“I want to apologize to her,” Driscoll explained.

“Why, sure,” said Dougherty. “Of course. I forgot. Come on.”

Halfway to the door they were intercepted by Dumain.

“Well?” said he.

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Dougherty. “Driscoll’s a gentleman.”

“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed the little Frenchman. “Eet ees not surprising. For zee little Miss Williams — she ees irresistible.”

He returned to the game, and Driscoll and Dougherty passed down the hall and thence into the lobby.

The lobby, more ornate and pretentious than the billiard room, was at the same time more typical. With Driscoll, we shall pause to observe it in detail.

There were two entrances: the main one on Broadway, and a side door leading to a crosstown street not far from Madison Square. On the right, entering, were the hotel desk and the cigar stand; beyond, the hall leading to the bar and billiard room. Further on came the telegraph desk and the elevators. Along the whole length of the opposite side was a line of leather-covered lounges and chairs, broken only by the side entrance.

At one time the Lamartine had been quiet, fashionable, and exclusive. Now it was noisy, sporty, and popular; for fashion had moved north.

The marble pillars stood in lofty indifference to the ever-changing aspect and character of the human creatures who moved about on the patterned floor; subtly time had imprinted the mark of his fingers on the carvings, frescoes, and furniture. From magnificent the lobby had become presentable; it was now all but dingy.

With its appearance and character, its employees had changed also. The clerks were noisy and assertive, the bell boys worldly-wise to the point of impudence, and the Venus at the cigar stand needs no further description than the phrase itself.

But what of the girl at the telegraph desk? Here, indeed, we find an anomaly. And it is here that Driscoll and Dougherty stop on their way from the billiard room.

As Lila Williams looked up and found the two men standing before her, her face turned a delicious pink and her eyes fell with embarrassment. Before Dougherty spoke Driscoll found time to regard her even more closely than he had before, in the light of the new and interesting information he had received concerning her.

Her figure was slender and of medium height; exactly of the proper mold and strength for her small, birdlike head, that seemed to have fluttered and settled of itself on the white and delicate neck. Her lips, partly open, seemed ever to tremble with a sweet consciousness of the mystery she held within her — the mystery of the eternal feminine.

Her hands, lying before her on the desk, were very white, and perhaps a little too thin; her hair a fluffy, tangled mass of glorious brown.

“Altogether,” thought Driscoll, “I was not mistaken. She is absolutely a peach.”

“Miss Williams,” Dougherty was saying, “allow me to introduce a friend. Mr. Driscoll — Miss Williams.”

Lila extended a friendly hand.

“A little while ago,” said Driscoll, “I was presumptuous and foolish. I want to ask you to forgive me. I know there was no excuse for it — and yet there was—”

He stopped short, perceiving that Lila was not listening to him. She was gazing at Dougherty with what seemed to Driscoll an expression of tender alarm.

“Oh!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Mr. Dougherty!”

That gentleman appeared startled.

“What is it?”

“Your... your... why, what has happened to your nose?”

“My nose?” he repeated, puzzled.

“Yes. What has happened?”

Dougherty raised his hand and roughly grasped that rather prominent feature of his face; then his hand suddenly fell and he made a grimace of pain. Then he remembered.

“Oh,” he said, as carelessly as possible, “a mere nothing. I fell. Struck it against a billiard table.”

Driscoll was doing his best to keep a straight face.

“Mr. Dougherty,” said Lila, shaking a finger at him solemnly, “tell me the truth. You have been fighting.”

The ex-prizefighter and Broadway loafer, blushing like a schoolboy, gathered himself together as though about to attack the entire heavyweight division.

“Well,” he demanded with assumed bravado, “and what if I have been fighting?”

“You promised me you wouldn’t,” said Lila. “That is, you said you wouldn’t — anyone — who annoyed — about me.”

“It wasn’t his fault, Miss Williams,” said Driscoll, coming to his friend’s assistance. “The blame is mine. It is for that I want to apologize. I can’t say how sorry I am, and I hope you’ll forgive me, and if there’s any — I mean—”

Driscoll, too, found himself hopelessly confused by the frank gaze of those brown eyes.

“Anyway,” he ended lamely, “I’ll renew his promise for him. He’ll never do it again.”

“No, you won’t do anything of the kind!” exclaimed Dougherty, who, during the period of relief offered by Driscoll, had fully recovered himself — “nobody shall promise anything for me. And, Miss Williams, I am very sorry I ever made that promise to you. I take it back. What has happened today is proof that I would never be able to keep it, anyway.”

“But you must keep it,” said Lila.

“I can’t.”

“Mr. Dougherty!”

“Well, I’ll try,” Dougherty agreed. “I promise to try. But there are some things I can’t stand for; and we all feel the same way about it. You leave it to us. We know you don’t like us much, and we don’t blame you. But any guy that tries to get into informal communication with your eyes is going to see stars — and that’s no pretty speech, either.”

Lila opened her mouth to renew her protest, but someone approached to send a telegram, and she contented herself with a disapproving shake of the head.