When he came down dressed for dinner, Doris was flitting about the library, waiting his coming. She glanced correctly around to forestall eavesdroppers, and offered him her cheek.

"Is this a skating costume?" he said, glancing quizzically at the trailing, mysterious silken ballgown of lavender and gold, which enfolded her graceful figure like fragrant petals. "By the way, why didn't you let me know I was to have a rival?"

"Don't be silly," she said, brushing the powder from his sleeve. "I was furious. It was all mother's doings."

"Yes, you look furious!" he said to tease her. "Never mind, Doris, General Managers must calculate on all possibilities."

She closed his lips with an indignant movement of her scented fingers, looking at him reproachfully.

"Bojo, don't be horrid. Marry Boskirk? I'd just as soon marry a mummy. I should be petrified with boredom in a week."

"He's in love with you."

"He? He couldn't love anything. How ridiculous! Heavens, just to think I'll have to talk his dreary talk sends creeping things up and down my back."

Bojo professed to be unconvinced, playing the offended and jealous lover, not perhaps without an ulterior motive, and they were in the midst of a little tiff when the others arrived. Mrs. Drake did not dare to isolate him completely, but she placed Boskirk on Doris's right, and to carry out his a.s.sumed irritation Bojo devoted himself to Patsie, who rattled away heedless of where her chatter hit.

Dinner over, Bojo, relenting a little, sought to organize a general party, but meeting with no success went off, heedless of reproachful glances, to array himself in sweater and boots.

Twenty minutes later they were on the toboggan, Patsie tucked in front, laughing back at him over her shoulder with the glee of the escapade.

Below them the banked track ran over the dim, white slopes glowing in the moonlight.

"All you have to do is to keep it from wobbling off the track with your foot," said Patsie.

"How are you--warm enough? Wrap up tight!" he said, pushing the toboggan forward until it tilted on the iced crest. "Ready?"

"Let her go!"

He flung himself down on his side, her back against his shoulder, and with a shout they were off, whistling into the frosty night, shooting down the steep incline, faster and faster, rocking perilously, as the smooth, flat toboggan rose from the trough and tilted against the inclined sides, swerving back into place at a touch of his foot, rising and falling with the curved slopes, shooting past cl.u.s.tered trees that rushed by them like inky storm-clouds, flashing smoothly at last on to the level.

"Lean to the left!" she called to him, as they reached a banked curve.

"When?"

"Now!" Her laugh rang out as they rose almost on the side and sped into the bend. "Hold tight, there's a jump in a minute-- Now!"

Their bodies stiffened against each other, her hair sweeping into his eyes, blinding him as the toboggan rose fractionally from the ground and fell again.

"Gorgeous!"

"Wonderful!"

They glided on smoothly, with slacking speed, a part of the stillness that lay like the soft fall of snow over the luminous stretches and the cl.u.s.tered mysterious shadows; without a word exchanged, held by the witchery of the night, and the soft, fairylike crackling voyage. Then gradually, imperceptibly, at last the journey ended. The toboggan came to a stop in a glittering region of white with a river bank and elfish bushes somewhere at their side, and ahead a dark rise against the horizon with lights like pin-p.r.i.c.ks far off, and on the air, from nowhere, the tinkle of sleigh-bells, but faint, shaken by some will-o'-the-wisp perhaps.

"Are you glad you came?" she said at last, without moving.

"Very glad."

"Think of sitting around talking society when you can get out here," she said indignantly. "Oh, Bojo, I'm never going to stand it. I think I'll take the veil."

He laughed, but softly, with the feeling of one who understands, as though in that steep plunge the icy air had cleansed his brain of all the hot, fierce worldly desires for money, power, and vanities which had possessed it like a fever.

"I wish we could sit here like this for hours," she said, unconsciously resting against his shoulder.

"I wish we could, too, Drina," he answered, meditating.

She glanced back at him.

"I like you to call me Drina," she said.

"Drina when you are serious, Patsie when you are trying to upset sleighs."

"Yes, there are two sides of me, but no one knows the other." She sat a moment as though hesitating on a confidence, and suddenly sprang up.

"Game for another?"

"A dozen others!"

They caught up the rope together, but suddenly serious she stopped.

"Bojo?"

"What?"

"Sometimes I think you and Doris are not a bit in love."

"What makes you think that?" he said, startled.

"I don't know--you don't act--not as I would act--not as I should think people would act in love. Am I awfully impertinent?"

Troubled, he made no answer.

"Nothing is decided, of course," he said at last, rather surprised at the avowal.

They tramped up the hill, averting their heads occasionally as truant gusts of wind whirled snow-sprays in their eyes, chatting confidentially on less intimate subjects.

"Let's go softly and peek in," she said, returning into her mischievous self as the great gabled house afire with lights loomed before them.

They stood, shoulder to shoulder, peeping about a protecting tree at the group in the drawing-room. Mr. Drake was reading under the lamp, Fred and Gladys ensconced in the bay window, while Doris at the phonograph had resorted to Caruso.

"Heavens, what an orgy!-- Sh-h. Hurry now."

A second time they went plunging into the night, close together, more sober, the silence cut only by the hissing rush and an occasional warning from Drina, as each obstacle sprang past. But her voice was no longer hilarious with the glee of a child; it was attuned to the hush and slumber of the countryside.

"I hate the city!" she said rebelliously when again they had come to a stop. "I hate the life they want me to lead."

All at once a quick resentment came to him, at the thought that she should change and be turned into worldly ways.

"I'm afraid you're not made for a social career, Patsie," he said slowly. "I would hate to think of your being different."

"You can't say what you want, or do what you want, or let people know what you feel," she said in an outburst. "Just let them try to marry me off to any old duke or count and see what'll happen!"