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.

"Shaw," she answered, unwillingly.

"Is it spelled P-s-h-a-w?"

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?"

"He calls himself Herbert Ransome Shaw."

Laurie made a mental note of the name.

"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 am so glad," she murmured.

He ignored the irony in her tone.

"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!"

"Are you making a song of it?"

"Yes, a hymn."

She looked at him curiously.

"You're a queer boy. I can't quite make you out. One minute you're serious, and the next--"

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