"And why not?" she demanded, always quick to resent dictatorial airs.

"Because he makes you--well--conspicuous. He hasn't any business to dance with you the way he does. You aren't a professional but he makes you look like one."

"Thanks. A left-hand compliment but still a compliment!"

"It wasn't meant for one," said d.i.c.k soberly. "I hate it. Of course you dance wonderfully yourself. It isn't just dancing with you. It is poetry, stuff of dreams and all the rest of it. I can see that, and I know it must be a temptation to have a chance at a partner like that. Lord! Tony!

No man in every day life has a right to dance the way he can. He out-cla.s.ses Castle. I hate that kind of a man--half woman."

"There isn't anything of a woman about Alan, d.i.c.k. He is the most virulently male man I ever knew."

d.i.c.k fell silent at that. Presently he began again.

"Tony, please don't be offended at what I am going to say. I know it is none of my business, but I wish you wouldn't keep on with this affair with Ma.s.sey."

"Why not?" There was an aggressive sparkle in Tony's eyes.

"People are talking. I heard them last night when you were dancing with him. It hurts. Alan Ma.s.sey isn't the kind of a man for a girl like you to flirt with."

"Stuff and nonsense, d.i.c.ky! Any kind of a man is the kind for a girl to flirt with, if she keeps her head."

"But Tony, honestly, this Ma.s.sey hasn't a good reputation."

"How do you know?"

"Newspaper men know a great deal. They have to. Besides, Alan Ma.s.sey is a celebrity. He is written up in our files."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that if he should die to-morrow all we would have to do would be to put in the last flip. The biographical data is all on the card ready to shoot."

"Dear me. That's rather gruesome, isn't it?" shivered Tony. "I'm glad I'm not a celebrity. I'd hate to be stuck down on your old flies. Will I get on Alan's card if I keep on flirting with him?"

"Good Lord! I should hope not."

"I suppose I wouldn't be in very good company. I don't mean Alan. I mean--his ladies."

"Tony! Then you know?"

"About Alan's ladies? Oh, yes. He told me himself."

d.i.c.k looked blank. What was a man to do in a case like this, finding his big bugaboo no bugaboo at all?

"I know a whole lot about Alan Ma.s.sey, maybe more than is on your old card. I know his mother was Lucia Vannini, so beautiful and so gifted that she danced in every court in Europe and was loved by a prince. I know how Cyril Ma.s.sey, an American artist, painted her portrait and loved her and married her. I know how she worshiped him and was absolutely faithful to him to the day he died, when the very light of life went out for her."

"She managed to live rather cheerfully afterward, even without light, if all the stories about her are true," observed d.i.c.k, with, for him, unusual cynicism.

"You don't understand. She had to live."

"There are other ways of living than those she chose."

"Not for her. She knew only two things--love and dancing. She was thrown from a horse the next year after her husband died. Dancing was over for her. There was only--her beauty left. Her husband's people wouldn't have anything to do with her because she had been a dancer and because of the prince. Old John Ma.s.sey, Cyril's uncle, turned her and her baby from his door, and his cousin John and his wife refused even to see her. She said she would make them hear of her before she died. She did."

"They heard all right. She, and her son too, must have been a thorn in the flesh of the Ma.s.seys. They were all rigid Puritans I understand, especially old John."

"Serve him right," sniffed Tony. "They were rolling in wealth. They might have helped her kept her from the other thing they condemned so. She wanted money only for Alan, especially after he began to show that he had more than his father's gifts. She earned it in the only way she knew. I don't blame her."

"Tony!"

"I can't help it if I am shocking you, d.i.c.k. I can understand why she did it. She didn't care anything about the lovers. She never cared for anyone after Cyril died. She gave herself for Alan. Can't you see that there was something rather fine about it? I can."

d.i.c.k grunted. He remembered hearing something about a woman whose sins were forgiven her because she loved much. But he couldn't reconcile himself to hearing such stories from Tony Holiday's lips. They were remote from the clean, sweet, wholesome atmosphere in which she belonged.

"Anyway, Alan was a wonderful success. He studied in Paris and he had pictures on exhibition in salons over there before he was twenty. He was feted and courted and flattered and--loved, until he thought the world was his and everything in it--including the ladies." Tony made a little face at this. She did not care very-much for that part of Alan's story, herself. "His mother was afraid he was going to have his head completely turned and would lose all she had gained so hard for him, so she made him come back to America and settle down. He did. He made a great name for himself before he was twenty-five as a portrait painter and he and his mother lived so happily together. She didn't need any more lovers then.

Alan was all she needed. And then she died, and he went nearly crazy with grief, went all to pieces, every way. I suppose that part of his career is what makes you say he isn't fit for me to flirt with."

d.i.c.k nodded miserably.

"It isn't very pleasant for me to think of, either," admitted Tony. "I don't like it any better than you do. But he isn't like that any more.

When old John Ma.s.sey died without leaving any will Alan got all the money, because his cousin John and his stuck-up wife had died, too, and there was n.o.body else. Alan pulled up stakes and traveled all over the world, was gone two years and, when he came back, he wasn't dissipated any more. I don't say he is a saint now. He isn't, I know. But he got absolutely out of the pit he was in after his mother's death."

"Lucky for him they never found the baby John Ma.s.sey, who was stolen,"

d.i.c.k remarked. "He would have been the heir if he could have appeared to claim the money instead of Alan Ma.s.sey, who was only a grand nephew."

Tony stared.

"There wasn't any baby," she exclaimed.

"Oh yes, there was. John Ma.s.sey, Junior, had a son John who was kidnapped when he was asleep in the park and deserted by his nurse who had gone to flirt with a policeman. There was a great fuss made about it at the time.

The Ma.s.seys offered fabulous sums of money for the return of the child, but he never turned up. I had to dig up the story a few years ago when old John died, which is why I know so much about it."

"I don't believe Alan knew about the baby. He didn't tell me anything about it."

"I'll wager he knew, all right. It would be mighty unpleasant for him if the other Ma.s.sey turned up now."

"d.i.c.k, I believe you would be glad if Alan lost the money,"

reproached Tony.

"Why no, Tony. It's nothing to me, but I've always been sorry for that other Ma.s.sey kid, though he doesn't know what he missed and is probably a jail-bird or a janitor by this time, not knowing he is heir to one of the biggest properties in America."

"Sorry to disturb your theories, Mr.--er Carson," remarked Alan Ma.s.sey, suddenly appearing on the scene. "My cousin John happens to be neither a jail-bird nor a janitor, but merely comfortably dead. Lucky John!"

"But d.i.c.k said he wasn't dead--at least that n.o.body knew whether he was or not," objected Tony.

"Unfortunately your friend is in error. John Ma.s.sey is entirely dead, I a.s.sure you. And now, if he is quite through with me and my affairs, perhaps Mr. Carson will excuse you. Come, dear."

Alan laid a hand on Tony's arm with a proprietorial air which made d.i.c.k writhe far more than his insulting manner to himself had done. Tony looked quickly from one to the other. She hated the way Alan was behaving, but she did not want to precipitate a scene and yielded, leaving d.i.c.k, with a deprecatory glance, to go with Alan.

"I don't like your manner," she told the latter. "You were abominably rude just now."