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“Bill, I know you can do it if you make up your mind to, because you have the will power.”

He liked to have Catherine talking about him this way. She was showing him she liked him. She spoke the same way his mother and sisters often had when they tried to get him to do something for his own good. But when they did he was bored, and when Catherine did it, he liked it. She squeezed his arm, and as they crossed over to a show he was sure that tonight he was going to pop the question.

III

Studs steered Catherine into the Charlus Restaurant on Randolph Street. A tall and attractive hostess in a silken black dress flashed a business smile upon Studs and led them past rows of tables with fresh linen tablecloths, to a quiet corner. Just above the brown stained panelings in back of their table for two there hung an elaborately framed oil painting of a nymph who was semi-nude behind a trailing of gauzily painted white veiling. Hanging their coats on a hook, he gazed nonchalantly about the crowded restaurant where people spoke in slightly subdued voices. If anybody among them was watching him, he wanted them to see that he acted as if such restaurants were natural to him.

A waitress, whose white dress and apron gave Studs a sense of cleanliness, approached, waiting patiently for their order.

“I’ll just have a glass of warm milk,” Catherine said, smiling across the table.

“Warm milk, coffee, and a hamburger sandwich,” Studs ordered.

He stared absently about at a lank, thin fellow seated nearby and across from a blond girl who was beautiful enough for the movies. She laughed at what the tall thin fellow said, and her eyes were for him. That guy was in luck having such a dame.

“Gee, will I feel good when I finish my diet and lose those ten pounds,” Catherine said.

“I should imagine so,” he said, still fretting over the question of proposing.

Studs puffed nervously on a cigarette.

“I’m beginning to feel a lot better than I used to,” he said, fearing that she would remind him of his promise to cut down on his smoking.

“Gee, Bill, I’m so glad. At times I worry about your health and I wonder if you are taking the best care of yourself.”

“I’m all right, and I’m going to be all right,” he said.

“I know, Bill. I know it. But, Bill, you must take care of yourself, and cut down on your cigarette-smoking, too, like you promised me tonight you would.”

“Was I smoking?” Studs said, looking with an attempt at feigned surprise at the burning cigarette between his fingers. “Can you imagine that! I had the cigarette lit and was smoking without thinking I was doing it.”

“Bill, you should watch that and realize. And Bill, I don’t want you to think that I’m nagging you, because I’m not. I’m not nagging you, am I, when I say you should watch about your smoking cigarettes?”

“No, you’re right and after I finish this one, I’ll watch myself,” Studs said.

The waitress set their orders before them, and Studs squashed his cigarette in the glass ash tray. He began to feel that he had no guts because here he was delaying asking her after he had made up his mind.

“Catherine?” he suddenly blurted out, his nervousness seeming to choke his breath and force the syllables of her name out of his mouth. Sipping at her milk, she looked at him, opening her eyes widely.

“How did you like the picture?” he asked, feeling foolish.

“Good, I always like pictures with a happy ending. Sad pictures send you away feeling blue and most of them are so foolish. For a while I thought that Ralph Hardwyne—isn’t he a handsome actor though?—was going to lose out and not win back his wife, but I sighed with relief when he did.”

“I thought it was a pretty good picture. Good acting, too.”

“I don’t like hooks either with unhappy endings. Life is sad enough without people writing sad books.”

He lit a cigarette after finishing his sandwich and coffee. He delayed speaking and tried to seem as if he felt natural and normal. They looked at one another, their sympathies conveyed with glances, feelings