Quin

								

herself, there was something thrilling in having hands that had
captured a machine-gun laboriously threading tiny beads for her, in
having a soldier who had been decorated for courage stammer and blush
in her presence.
"Well," said the Captain, who had been lazily observing her, "aren't you
about through with your mental monologue?"
Eleanor roused herself with a start.
"Oh, I am sorry! I was thinking about my boys at the hospital. You can't
imagine how I hate to leave them!"
The answer was evidently not what the Captain had expected. As long as
his company of feminine admirers marched in adoring unison he was
indifferent to their existence; but let one miss step and he was
instantly on the alert.
"I haven't noticed any tears being shed over leaving me," he said, and
the aggrieved note in his voice promptly stirred her humor.
"Why should I mind leaving you? You don't need me."
"How do you know?"
She looked at him scoffingly.
"You don't need anything or anybody. You've got all you want in
yourself."
"I'll show you what I want!" he said, and, quickly bending toward her, he
kissed her on the cheek.
It was the merest brush of his lips, but it brought the color flaming
into her face and the lightning into her eyes. She had never been so
angry in her life, and it seemed to her an age that she sat there rigid
and indignant, suffocated by his nearness but powerless to move away.
Then she got the car stopped, and announced with great dignity that she
was nearly home and that she would have to ask him to get out.
Captain Phipps lazily descended from the car, then stood with elbows on
the ledge of the door and rolled a cigarette with great deliberation.
Eleanor, in spite of her wrath, could not help admiring the graceful,
conscious movement of his slender hands with their highly polished nails.
It was not until he had struck his match that he looked at her and smiled
quizzically.
"What a dear little goose you are! Do you suppose that stage lovers are
going to stand in the wings and throw kisses to you?"
"No," said Eleanor hotly; "but that will be different."
"It certainly will," he agreed amiably. "You will not only have to be
kissed, but you will have to kiss back. You have a lot of little
puritanical prejudices to get over, my dear, before you can ever hope to
act. You don't want to be a thin-blooded little old maid, do you?"
The shot was well aimed, for Eleanor had no desire to follow in the arid
footsteps of her two spinster aunts. She looked at Captain Phipps
unsteadily and shook her head.
"Of course you don't," he encouraged her. "You aren't built for it.
Besides, it's an actress's business to cultivate her emotions rather than
repress them, isn't it?"
"Yes, I suppose it is."
"Then, for heaven's sake, obey your impulses and let other people obey
theirs. From now on you are to be identified with a profession that