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Rh …" Steele was saying. But Beatrice was gone with a whisk of skirts, hurrying out to Parker and the waiting car.

Steele stared after her until she had gone from sight. Slowly the dancing lights were subdued in his eyes. He had begun to wonder if he wasn't a bit overdoing all this. He had told himself all along that she was "a good little sport" and that, in time, she'd come to laugh with him at their rivalry and her own little losses. But he must admit, and he did admit rather sombrely for him, that the looks she had given him today were no such looks as he would care to see when one day he came to her soberly and showed her just what, in the depth of his heart, was his thought of her. A moment ago he had planned to go to the post office and drop a note to her, saying as he had said before, "Never, mind, Trixie; what you lose now you'll get back. I'm just saving it all for you!" But, when at last Parker and the car and Beatrice had disappeared, the unthinkable thing which Bill Steele did was to sigh heavily.

"I'd better look out what I'm doing," he admitted to himself thoughtfully. "The thing for me to do is begin making love. Real love, by the Lord, and no more funny monkey business. That's open and shut. And how in the name of Mike I'm going to do it when she won't even talk to me or let me talk to her, I don't know! I rather believe. … I'm damned sure of it! … I've been going at things backwards."

He visited both Turk and Ed Hurley in their new quarters, chatted briefly with Rose, treated Eddie to