"Aren't you going to dance--with some one?" I asked, turning back quickly, as Guilford's arm slipped about me and we started away into a heartless, senseless motion. Maitland Tait stood looking at me for an instant without answering, then swept his eyes down the room to where Mrs. Charles Sefton--a sister-in-law of the house of Kendall--and her daughter Anabel were standing. Mrs. Sefton was a pillar of society, and, if one _must_ use architectural similes, Anabel was a block. They caught him and made a sandwich of him on the spot. I whirled away with Guilford.

At the end of the dance I found myself at the far end of the ballroom, close to a door that opened into a small conservatory. The dim green within looked so calm and uncomplicated beside the glare of light which surrounded me that I turned toward it--thirstily.

"I'm going in here to rest a minute, Guilford," I explained, setting him free with a little push toward a group of girls he knew. "You run along and dance with some of them. Men aren't any too plentiful to-night."

"No-o--I'll go with you," he objected lazily, slipping his cigarette case from his pocket. "You're too darned pretty to-night to stay long in a conservatory alone."

"But I'll not be alone," I replied, with a return of that frightful recklessness which tempted me to throw myself on his mercy and say: "I'm in love with this Englishman--madly in love! I have never been in love before--and I hope I shall never be again if it always feels like this!" Instead of saying this, however, I said, with a smile: "Don't think for a moment that I shall be alone. Grandfather and Uncle Lancelot will be with me."

He looked disgusted.

"What's going on in your conscience now?" he asked, with slightly primped lips.

"Something--that I'll tell you about later."

"But has it got to be threshed out to-night?" he demanded irritably.

"I had hoped that we might spend this one evening acting like human beings."

"Still, it seems that we can't," I answered, with a foolish attempt to sound inconsequential. "Please let me sit down in here by myself for a little while, Guilford."

He turned on his heel, with an unflattering abruptness, and left me. I entered the damp, earthy-smelling room, where wicker tables held giant ferns, and a fountain drizzling sleepily in the center of the apartment, broke off the view of a green cane bench just beyond; I made for this settee and sank down dejectedly.

How long I sat there I could not tell--one never can, if you've noticed--but after a little while I heard the next dance start, and then three people, still in the position of a sandwich, entered.

"How warm it is to-night!" I heard Maitland Tait's voice suddenly proclaim, in a fretful tone, as if the women with him were responsible for the disagreeable fact. But he drew up a chair, rather meekly, and subsided into it. "This is the first really warm night we've had this summer."

"It seems like the irony of fate, doesn't it?" Anabel Sefton asked with a nervous little giggle. There are some girls who can never talk to a man five minutes without bringing fate's name into the conversation.

"We had almost no dances during April and May, when one really needed violence of some sort to keep warm," her mother hastened to explain.

"And now, at this last dance of the season, it is actually hot."

"The last big dance, mother."

"Of course!" Mrs. Sefton leaned toward the other two chairs confidentially. "A crush like this is too big," she declared.

"Oh, but I like the big affairs," Anabel pouted. "You never know then who you're going to run across! Just think of the unfamiliar faces here to-night! I happened up on Gayle Cargill and Doctor Macdonald down in the drawing-room a while ago--where they'd hidden to sing Italian, sotto voce!"

"Then Dan Hunter is here--for a wonder," her mother agreed, as if a recital of Oldburgh's submerged tenth were quite the most interesting thing she could think up for a foreigner's delectation, "and Grace Christie! Have you met Miss Christie, Mr. Tait?"

"Yes," he replied.

"She's gone in for newspaper work," Anabel elucidated.

"Just a pose," her mother hastily added. "She really belongs to one of our best families, and is engaged to Guilford Blake."

"But she won't marry him," Anabel said virtuously. "I'm sure _I_ can't understand such a nature. They've been engaged all their lives and----"

"She doesn't deserve anything better than to lose him," her mother broke in. "If he should chance to look in some other direction for a while she'd change her tactics, no doubt."

"Oh--no doubt," echoed a deep male voice, the tones as cool as the water-drops plashing into the fountain beside him.

"Anyway, it's her kind--those women who would be sirens if the mythological age hadn't pa.s.sed--who cause so much trouble in the world," Mrs. Sefton wound up. At fifty-two women can look upon sirens dispa.s.sionately.

After a while the music began throbbing again, and a college boy came up to claim Anabel. The trio melted quietly away. I rose from my chair and started toward the door when I saw that Maitland Tait had not left with the others. He was standing motionless beside the fountain.

I came up with him and he did not start. Evidently he had known all the while that I was in the room.

"Well?" he said, with a certain aloofness that strangely enough gave him the appearance of intense aristocracy. "Well?"

"Well--" I echoed, feebly, but before I could go away farther he had drawn himself up sharply.

"I was coming to look for you--to say good-by," he said.

"Good-by?" I repeated blankly. "You mean good night, don't you?"

"No."

Our eyes met squarely then, and mine dropped. They had hit against steel.

"And this is--good-by?" I plead, while I felt that wild wind and waves were beating against my body and that the skies were falling.

"Of course!" he answered harshly. "What else could it be?"

I think that we must have stood there in silence for a minute or more, then, without speaking another word, or even looking at me squarely in the face again, he moved deliberately away and I lost all trace of him in the crowd.

CHAPTER XII

AN a.s.sIGNMENT

The next afternoon the city editor again said "d.a.m.n" and blushed.

"You needn't blush," I said to him wearily.

He glanced around in surprise.

"No?"

"No! I quite agree with you!"

It was late in the afternoon, but I made no apology for my tardiness, as I hung my hat on its nail and started toward my desk.

"Oh, you feel like saying it yourself, eh?" he questioned.

"I do."