And it was June.

"For you know, really, you're the very dearest of them all," said Mr.

Allie, with soft decision, as if he had been arguing about it.

There was not a thing to say, and she could not have said it if there had been.

"And I've known a good many," continued Mr. Allie, which probably was true, only Mr. Allie knew how true; "but I've never felt just this way about any of them before."

Then they sat very still, and the bird note rose and fell.

"Maybe you'd rather go in," said Mr. Allie as the music began again.

Was it hurt in his tone?

"Oh," said Alexina, "no."

Mr. Allie picked up the end of the scarf which had fallen to the steps and put it about her shoulders again. It brought his face around where he could see hers. Was he laughing? Or were his eyes full of reproach?

For what? He did not look a bit like a contemporary of anybody's mother. Yet perhaps the moustache that drooped over the mouth did hide--lines, and the lazy eyes sometimes did look tired. Youth has its dreams, vague, secret, yet the Prince of the dreams should be no Mr. Allie with eyes that look weary and tired.

"If I thought," said Mr. Allie softly, oh, so softly; "if I thought that you could care?"

"Oh," said Alexina, "no, I couldn't."

She sobbed. It seemed cruel to Mr. Allie.

Then they talked it over, he so gently, she with self-reproach and little chokes against tears. He even held her hand, she too tender-hearted to know how to take it away, though the remorse eating into her heart was forgotten somewhat in the glow, the wonder that this thing, this sad but beautiful thing should come to her. Presently he took her in. The rest of the evening sped hazily. Going home, she talked to Mr. Allie and Molly as in a dream.

Reaching the hotel, and in their own apartment, Alexina sank down on the sofa, her wrap and fan falling un.o.bserved, and sat, chin on palm, shyly remembering, shrinking a little, and blushing. Suddenly conscious, she turned and found Molly in her doorway between, undressing, and looking at her with knowledge and with laughter. She had forgotten Molly, who had been rummaging and had brought out some olives and crackers and wine. Molly lunched at all unheard-of hours.

Alexina sprang up. She turned white, then scarlet.

"'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,' Jean Garnier would say," Molly began, unloosing her waist and laughing again. "Mais non, mon enfant, you take these things too seriously; it is time you understood. He has said as much to every pretty girl there, one time and another, and to most of their mothers before them, only they all understood. It's very charming in you, of course, right now, and to a man like him, irresistible but, still--Malise--"

Alexina looked at Molly. Then up welled a red that rose to her hair and spread down her throat and over her bare young shoulders. She would never misunderstand again. It is a cruel thing, the hotness of shame. But Molly was staring. Malise was beautiful with her head so proudly up and her cheeks flaming.

There was more to understand. They were a gay crowd, the young people and their elders with whom Molly and Alexina and Georgy were going.

Things came to Alexina slowly.

"It isn't just nice," she told Molly anxiously, an evening at the w.i.l.l.y Fields'; "Georgy says you've all been in the pantry opening more champagne. I'm sure they're acting like there's been enough, and he thinks, too, we ought to go home."

"Good Lord," said Molly. She looked so slender, so childishly innocent standing there where the daughter had drawn her aside, one couldn't believe she had said it. "This is the way you used to go on when you were a child. One would think you'd had your fill of what people ought to do, living with the Blairs."

Alexina looked at her. That Molly should dare allude to that past this way! Then she went and found her mother's wrap and brought it.

"Put it on," she said.

Molly laughed rebelliously, then waveringly.

"We are going home," said the daughter.

Molly essayed to put it on but didn't seem able to find the hooks, and Alexina, hardening her heart, would not help her, but went to find Georgy. He was looking stern himself, and forlorn and young, and the fact that she knew why did not serve to make Alexina happier.

The cars had stopped running and they walked home, leaving hilarity behind them. Molly was acting stubbornly, her tones were injured, and her talk incessant. Alexina couldn't make her stop.

"Jean was just such another clog as Malise," she told Georgy. "He was forever harping about proprieties, and he wore me out trying to make me tie my money up; Malise isn't stingy, I'll say that, though she might have been--she's a Blair. Jean shivered over spending money. And after there wasn't any left, he used to sit and cough and cry over his Shakespeare about it. He had thought he was going to be a great poet once, himself, Jean had."

In the light of the setting moon one could see Molly's childlike face; and her voice, with its upward cadence, was more plaintive than the face. The very look and the sound of her were sweet, seductively sweet.

"He liked to believe himself a Gascon, too, Jean did, and he loved his Villon too. He wasn't well ever; he couldn't always breathe, Jean couldn't, but, _vraiment_, he could swagger as well as any."

The night was still, the streets asleep. Nearing the hotel now, the way led past blocks of warehouses and wholesale establishments. Molly stumbled over a grating. Georgy steadied her. They went on, their footsteps echoing up from the flagging as from a vault.

"I'm cold," complained Molly, "and," querulously, "you know, Malise, it will make me cough if I take cold. Jean coughed. After he coughed for a year and the money was gone, he raised more on our things. Then they came and seized them, except my trunks; Jean had sent those away.

I was sick, too; I took the cough from Jean, and I was afraid after I heard one could take it, so he made me come away. Celeste had some money. He made us come; he said it would be easier to know I was over here, and it would be better for him at the hospital--'les soeurs sont bonnes,' Jean said over and over."

Alexina was hearing it for the first time. People like Molly supply no background, the present is the only moment, and Alexina was not one to ask.

At the hotel entrance, in the ladies' deserted hallway, even the nodding bell-boy gone, Georgy paused. Molly went and sat down in a chair against the wall. She laughed unsteadily, though there was nothing to laugh about. Her lids were batting and fluttering like a sleepy child's. "I thought you said it was late, Malise," she remarked.

"Wait," entreated Georgy of Alexina, and squared himself between her and her mother. He was a dear, handsome boy. He gazed pleadingly at the tall, fair-haired girl whose eyes were meeting his so apologetically.

"You said to me there, to-night, you couldn't care for me that way,"

he told her, "but couldn't you marry me anyhow, Alexina, and we'll take care of her together?"

For he thought she knew what he did. Her eyes, which had lowered, lifted again, doubtfully, wistfully. Was she wishing she could? They met his. Perhaps his were too humble.

A shiver went through the girl. Then came a sobbing utterance. "I can't, I can't; but oh, if you only knew how I wish I could!"

She broke down in tears. "Don't be mad with me, Georgy."

"Oh," said Georgy, preparing to go, "it's not that I'm mad. I reckon you don't understand these things yet, Alexina."

CHAPTER EIGHT

It seemed all at once as if some wilful perversity seized Molly; at home she was so petulant Alexina dared not cross her, for to anger her was to make her cough; abroad she was gayer than any, almost to recklessness. Celeste, taciturn and secretive, kept herself between mother and daughter insistently, and often the door to Molly's room was locked until afternoon. Mrs. Garnier must not be disturbed, she said.

One of these times, a day in late July, Alexina went out to the Carringfords'. Emily knew most of the comings and goings of Alexina and her mother. In her heart probably she was envious, though to Alexina she was concerned.

"That picnic of last week is being talked about, Alexina," she said.

Alexina flushed, but she was honest. "It ought to be," she said.

Gaiety can tread close upon the heels of recklessness. But if Molly went the daughter had to go, for this very reason, though she could not tell Emily this.

So she spoke of other things. "Do you know anything of Uncle Austen?"

she asked. "Is he still taking his meals down-town and sleeping at the house?"