"Because this is the life for me. I've been a heroine and a war-worker about as long as I can. I'm for the fleshpots and the cold-cream jars and the light fantastic. Aren't you going to dance with me any more?"

"Just as you please," Davidge said, with a singularly boyish sulkiness, and wondered why Mamise laughed so mercilessly:

"Of course I please."

The music struck up an abandoned jig, but he danced with great dignity till his feet ran away with him. Then he made off with her again in one of his frenzies, and a laughter filled his whole being.

She heard him growl something.

"What did you say?" she said.

"I said, 'd.a.m.n you!'"

She laughed so heartily at this that she had to stop dancing for a moment. She astonished him by a brazen question:

"Do you really love me as much as that?"

"More," he groaned, and they bobbed and ducked and skipped as he muttered a wild anachronism:

"If you don't marry me I'll murder you."

"You're murdering me now. May I breathe, please?"

He was furious at her evasion of so solemn a proposal. Yet she was so beautifully alive and aglow that he could not exactly hate her. But he said:

"I won't ask you again. Next time you can ask me."

"All right; that's a bet. I'll give you fair warning."

And then that dance was over, and Mamise triumphant in all things. She was tumultuously hale and happy, and her lover loved her.

To her that hath--for now, whom should Mamise see but Lady Clifton-Wyatt?

Her heart ached with a reminiscent fear for a moment; then a malicious hope set it going again. Major Widdicombe claimed Mamise for the next dance, and extracted her from Davidge's possession. As they danced out, leaving Davidge stranded, Mamise noted that Lady C.-W. was regarding Davidge with a startled interest.

The whirl of the dance carried her close to Lady Clifton-Wyatt, and she knew that Lady C.-W. had seen her. Broken glimpses revealed to her that Lady C.-W. was escorting her escort across the ballroom floor toward Davidge.

She saw the brazen creature tap Davidge's elbow and smile, putting out her hand with coquetry. She saw her debarra.s.s herself of her companion, a French officer whose exquisite horizon-blue uniform was amazingly crossed with the wound and service chevrons of three years'

warfaring. Nevertheless, Lady Clifton-Wyatt dropped him for the civilian Davidge. Mamise, flitting here and there, saw that Davidge was being led to the punch-altar, thence to a lonely strip of chairs, where Lady C.-W. sat herself down and motioned him to drop anchor alongside.

Mamise longed to be near enough to hear what she could guess: her enemy's artless prelude followed by gradual modulations to her main theme--Mamise's wicked record.

Mamise wished that she had studied lip-reading to get the details. But this was a slight vexation in the exultance of her mood. She was serene in the consciousness that Davidge already knew the facts about her, and that Lady Clifton-Wyatt's gossip would fall with the dreary thud of a story heard before. So Mamise's feet flew, and her heart made a music of its own to the tune of:

"Thank G.o.d, I told him!"

She realized, as never before, the tremendous comfort and convenience of the truth. She had been by instinct as veracious as a politely bred person may be, but now she understood that the truth is mighty good business. She resolved to deal in no other wares.

This resolution lasted just long enough for her to make a hasty exception: she would begin her exclusive use of the truth as soon as she had told Polly a neat lie in explanation of her inexplicable journey to Baltimore.

Lady C.-W. was doing Mamise the best turn in her power. Davidge was still angry at Mamise's flippancy in the face of his ardor. But Lady C.-W.'s attack gave the flirt the dignity of martyrdom. When Lady C.-W. finished her subtly casual account of all that Mamise had done or been accused of doing, Davidge crushed her with the quiet remark:

"So she told me."

"She told you that!"

"Yes, and explained it all!"

"She would!" was the best that Lady Clifton-Wyatt could do, but she saw that the case was lost. She saw that Davidge's gaze was following Mamise here and there amid the dancers, and she was sportswoman enough to concede:

"She is a beauty, anyway--there's no questioning that, at least."

It was the canniest thing she could have done to re-establish herself in Davidge's eyes. He felt so well reconciled with the world that he said:

"You wouldn't care to finish this dance, I suppose?"

"Why not?"

Lady Clifton-Wyatt was democratic--in the provinces and the States--and this was as good a way of changing the subject as any. She rose promptly and entered the bosom of Davidge. The good American who did not believe in aristocracies had just time to be overawed at finding himself hugging a real Lady with a capital L when the music stopped.

It is an old saw that what is too foolish to be said can be sung.

Music hallows or denatures whatever it touches. It was quite proper, because quite customary, for Davidge and Lady Clifton-Wyatt to stand enfolded in each other's embrace so long as a dance tune was in the air. The moment the musicians quit work the att.i.tude became indecent.

Amazing and eternal mystery, that custom can make the same thing mean everything, or nothing, or all the between-things. The ancient Babylonians carried the idea of the permissible embrace to the ultimate intimacy in their annual festivals, and the good women doubtless thought no more of it than a woman of to-day thinks of waltzing with a presentable stranger. They went home to their husbands and their housework as if they had been to church. Certain Bolsheviki, even in the year 1918, put up placards renewing the ancient Mesopotamian custom, under the guise of a community privilege and a civic duty.

And yet some people pretend to differentiate between fashions and morals!

But n.o.body at this dance was foolish enough to philosophize. Everybody was out for a good time, and a Scotsman from the British emba.s.sy came up to claim Lady Clifton-Wyatt's hand and body for the next dance.

Davidge had been mystically attuned anew to Mamise, and he found her in a mood for reconciliation. She liked him so well that when the Italian aviator to whom she had pledged the "Tickle Toe" came to demand it, she perjured herself calmly and eloped with Davidge. And Davidge, instead of being alarmed by her easy morals, was completely rea.s.sured.

But he found her unready with another perjury when he abruptly asked her:

"What are you doing to-morrow?"

"Let me see," she temporized in a flutter, thinking of Baltimore and Nicky.

"If you've nothing special on, how about a tea-dance? I'm getting addicted to this."

"I'm afraid I'm booked up for to-morrow," she faltered. "Polly keeps the calendar. Yes, I know we have some stupid date--I can't think just what. How about the day after?"

The deferment made his amorous heart sick, and to-morrow's to-morrow seemed as remote as Judgment Day. Besides, as he explained:

"I've got to go back to the shipyard to-morrow evening. Couldn't you give me a lunch--an early one at twelve-thirty?"

"Yes, I could do that. In fact, I'd love it!"

"And me too?"

"That would be telling."