"But, for heaven's sake, don't run!" he laughed. "Do you want the creature to think we're flying before him?"
She flushed and moderated her pace. Side by side, and quite deliberately, they left the restaurant, while the stranger watched them with his dull, fixed gaze. He seemed to have recovered his temper, but it was also plain that the little encounter had given him something to think about. When he resumed his luncheon he ate slowly and with an air of deep abstraction, as if working out some grave problem.
"What's his name?" asked Laurie, as he helped Miss Mayo into a waiting taxicab.
She looked startled. Indeed, his most casual questions seemed to startle her and put her, in a way, on her guard.
Laurie asked the question with polite interest. Then, realizing that in her preoccupation she did not follow this flight of his mercurial spirits, he sobered. "It's a perfectly good name," he conceded, "but there must be more of it. What's the rest?"
"I shall call him Bertie," he firmly announced, "to show you how unimportant he really is. By the way,"--a sudden memory struck him--"he told me your name--Doris."
He added the name so simply that he seemed to be calling her by it. A faint shadow of her elusive smile touched her lips.
"I like it--Doris," Laurie repeated, dreamily.
"I suppose you have several more, like our friend Bertie, but you needn't tell them to me. If I had to use them every time I spoke to you, it might check my inspiration. Doris will do very nicely. Doris, Doris!"
"You're a queer boy. I can't quite make you out. One minute you're serious, and the next--"
"If you're puzzled over me, picture my mental turmoil over you."
"Oh--me?" With a gesture she consigned herself to the uttermost ends of the universe.
The taxicab had stopped. They had reached the studio building without observing the fact. The expression on the features of the chauffeur suggested that if they wanted to sit still all day they could do it, but that it would not be his personal choice. Doris held out her hand.
"Good-by," she said gently. "And thank you. I'm really more--appreciative--than I seem."
Laurie's look expressed more surprise than he had ever really experienced over anything.
"But we haven't settled matters!" he cried. "We're going to the bank--"