o earth by a fretful reminder that the bouillon was chilling i

two more cocktails. Ten Eyck was on the water-wagon in penance for a recent outbreak. Bob Fielding was one of those occasional beings who combine with total abstinence a life of the highest conviviality. Offhand, one would have said that Bob was an incessa

each of the guests named his choice, and no

juggled it on the accounts. And Willie forgot to ask Forbes what he would have instead! Willie ordered for himself that most innocent of beverages which masquerades ginger ale and a section of lemon peel under the ferocious name, the bloodt

k their heads, snapped their tongues like triggers, and smote their throats as with a solid bullet. Some stuck their very snout

cocktail. She looked down, and her lips seemed

or decorum's sake. Winifred speedily killed the self-confidence he had gained from his first flight. His sense of rhythm was incommensurate with hers. Whe

Willie's head barely reached her bare shoulder. He clutched her desperately as one who is doomed

he and Winifred were equally ludicrous. They were making the he

ly, as at a lunch-counter when the train is waiting. Forbes intended to sit out t

, young man

d I don't

'll tea

ut

I've got a son as old as

this. It was uncanny to be holding in his arms the mother of a grown

d. Now and then he had to glance down at the white hair of the hoyden to reassure himself. The music had the power of an incantation; it had bewitched

nt he felt that there was a splendid value in the new fashion, which bro

ts mingled as equals with the commoners, and t

a young lieutenant from the frontier, and he was dancing a breakdown with one of the most important matrons

fan, and booked him for the next dance but one. If Forbes had had social ambitions, he would have felt that

dance, Forbes made haste to ask Persis for the

he impression of an armor of silk and steel and strained elastic. Mrs. Neff was too slender for him, and for all her agility there was a sense of bones and muscles. But Persis was f

es. He was a musician who knows his instrument and his art well enough to improvise: soul and fingers i

and with the gilded columns by a sort of instinct; they sidled, whirled, dipped, pranced

ress his lips there. Now and then her eyelids rose slowly and she looked up into his downward gaze. They were mysterious looks she gave him. They were to her as impersonal and vague as the ra

tribute she was unconsciously paying to the mere bea

are those of tones that lie just next each other; the harshest of noises rise whe

t her body to embrace and carry through the complex evolutions of a dance on a floor wh

custom and minute restraints permit an innocent dalliance with the materials of passion. One can only compare it to skating over thin ice, and say that so long as one keeps on skating a tiny

drag her forward or backward, co-exist with her breast to breast, thigh to thigh, and knee to knee. But he must not ever so slightly take advantage of her faith in him. He must not by the most delicate pressure or quirk of muscle imply anything beyo

eness of motive. Or, rather, he did not so much venture as relax his chivalry. He breathed too deeply of her incense, paid her th

ful. As subtle as the pressure of his arm was the resistance of her body. The

give

ply whi

rig

restored. He had sung a trifle sharp, and she, like

olemnly experiencing an awe of her. And now her beauty was less victorious over him than that swift p

usic ended

er dance wit

forgiveness that forgets, an

rse! Wh

in her heart. Its influe