"A friend of my Paris days--Thessalie Dunois----" Again he checked himself to turn and greet Corot Mandel, subtle creator and director of exotic spectacles--another tall and rather heavily built man, with a mop of black and shiny hair, a monocle, and sanguine features slightly oriental.

With Corot Mandel had come Elsena Helmund--an attractive woman of thoroughbred origin and formal environment, and apparently fed up with both. For she frankly preferred "grades" to "registered stock," and she prowled through every art and theatrical purlieu from the Mews to Westchester, in eternal and unquiet search for an antidote to the s.e.x-ennui which she erroneously believed to be an intellectual necessity for self-expression.

"Who is that winning child with red hair?" she enquired, nodding informal recognition to the other guests, whom she already knew.

"Don't tell me," she added, elevating a quizzing gla.s.s and staring at Dulcie, "that this engaging infant has a history already! It isn't possible, with that April smile in her child eyes!"

"You bet she hasn't a history, Elsena," said Barres, frowning; "and I'll see that she doesn't begin one as long as she's in my neighbourhood."

Corot Mandel, who had been heavily inspecting Dulcie through his monocle, now stood twirling it by its frayed and greasy cord:

"I could do something for her--unless she's particularly yours, Barres?" he suggested. "I've seldom seen a better type in New York."

"You idiot. Don't you recognise her? She's Dulcie Soane! You could have picked her yourself if you'd had any flaire."

"Oh, h.e.l.l," murmured Mandel, disgusted. "And I thought I possessed flaire. Your private property, I suppose?" he added sourly.

"Absolutely. Keep off!"

"Watch me," murmured Corot Mandel, with a wry face, as they moved forward to join the others and be presented to the little guest of the evening.

Westmore came in at the same moment--a short, blond, vigorous young man, who knew everybody except Thessalie, and proceeded to smash the ice in characteristic fashion:

"Dulcie! You beautiful child! How are you, duckey?"--catching her by both hands,--"a little salute for Nunky? Yes?"--kissing her heartily on both cheeks. "I've a gift for you in my overcoat pocket. We'll sneak out and get it after dinner!" He gave her hands a hearty squeeze, turned to the others: "I ought to have been Miss Soane's G.o.dfather. So I appointed myself as such. Where are the c.o.c.ktails, Garry?"

Road-to-ruin c.o.c.ktails were served--frosted orange juice for Dulcie.

Everybody drank her health. Then Aristocrates gracefully condescended to announce dinner. And Barres took out Dulcie, her arm resting light as a snowflake on his sleeve.

There were flowers everywhere in the dining-room; table, buffet, curtains, l.u.s.tres were gay with early blossoms, exhaling the haunting scent of spring.

"Do you like it, Dulcie?" he whispered.

She merely turned and looked at him, quite unable to speak, and he laughed at her brilliant eyes and flushed cheeks, and, dropping his right hand, squeezed hers.

"It's your party, Sweetness--all yours! You must have a good time every minute!" And he turned, still smiling, to Thessalie Dunois on his left:

"It's quite wonderful, Thessa, to have you here--to be actually seated beside you at my own table. I shall not let you slip away from me again, you enchanting ghost!--and leave me with a dislocated heart."

"Garry, that sounds almost sentimental. We're not, you know."

"How do I know? You never gave me a chance to be sentimental."

She laughed mirthlessly:

"Never gave you a chance? And our brief but headlong career together, monsieur? What was it but a continuous cataract of chances?"

"But we were laughing our silly heads off every minute! I had no opportunity."

That seemed to amuse her and awaken the ever-latent humour in her.

"Opportunity," she observed demurely, "should be created and taken, not shyly awaited with eyes rolled upward and a sucked thumb."

They both laughed outright. Her colour rose; the old humorous challenge was in her eyes again; the subtle mask was already slipping from her features, revealing them in all their charming recklessness.

"You know my creed," she said; "to go forward--laugh--and accept what Destiny sends you--still laughing!" Her smile altered again, became, for a moment, strange and vague. "G.o.d knows that is what I am doing to-night," she murmured, lifting her slim gla.s.s, in which the gush of sunny bubbles caught the candlelight. "To Destiny--whatever it may be!

Drink with me, Garry!"

Around them the chatter and vivacity increased, as Damaris ended a duel of wit with Westmore and prepared for battle with Corot Mandel.

Everybody seemed to be irresponsibly loquacious except Dulcie, who sat between Barres and Esme Trenor, a silent, smiling, reserved little listener. For Barres was still conversationally involved with Thessalie, and Esme Trenor, languid and detached, being entirely ignored by Damaris, whom he had taken out, awaited his own proper modic.u.m of worship from his silent little neighbour on his left--which tribute he took for granted was his sacred due, and which, hitherto, he had invariably received from woman.

But n.o.body seemed to be inclined to worship; Damaris scarcely deigned to notice him, his impudence, perhaps, still rankling. Thessalie, laughingly engaged with Barres, remained oblivious to the fashionable portrait painter. As for Elsena Helmund, that youthful matron was busily pretending to comprehend Corot Mandel's covert orientalisms, and secretly wondering whether they were, perhaps, as improper as Westmore kept whispering to her they were, urging her to pick up her skirts and run.

Esme Trenor permitted a few weary but slightly disturbed glances to rest on Dulcie from time to time, but made no effort to entertain her.

And she, on her part, evinced no symptoms of worshipping him. And all the while he was thinking to himself:

"Can this be the janitor's daughter? Is she the same rather soiled, impersonal child whom I scarcely ever noticed--the thin, immature, negligible little drudge with a head full of bobbed red hair?"

His lack of vision, of finer discernment, deeply annoyed him. Her lack of inclination to worship him, now that she had the G.o.d-sent opportunity, irritated him.

"The silly little bounder," he thought, "how can she sit beside me without timidly venturing to entertain me?"

He stole another profoundly annoyed glance at Dulcie. The child was certainly beautiful--a slim, lovely, sensitive thing of qualities so delicate that the painter of pretty women became even more surprised and chagrined that it had taken Barres to discover this desirable girl in the silent, shabby child of Larry Soane.

Presently he lurched part way toward her in his chair, and looked at her with bored but patronising encouragement.

"Talk to me," he said languidly.

Dulcie turned and looked at him out of uninterested grey eyes.

"What?" she said.

"Talk to me," he repeated pettishly.

"Talk to yourself," retorted Dulcie, and turned again to listen to the gay nonsense which Damaris and Westmore were exchanging amid peals of general laughter.

But Esme Trenor was thunderstruck. A deep and painful colour stained his pallid features. Never before had mortal woman so flouted him. It was unthinkable. It really wouldn't do. There must be some explanation for this young girl's monstrous att.i.tude toward offered opportunity.

"I say," he insisted, still very red, "are you bashful, by any chance?"

Dulcie slowly turned toward him again:

"Sometimes I am bashful; not now."

"Oh. Then wouldn't you like to talk to me?"

"I don't think so."

"Fancy! And why not, Dulcie?"