"Queer," mused the man. "A month ago I would have understood it. It would have seemed sensible enough to hold on to the cold cash at any risk. Now it looks different. Money is filthy stuff, man. It is what they put on dead eye-lids to keep them down. Sometimes we put it on our own living lids to keep us from seeing straight. You are sure the money's worth so much to you, Alan Ma.s.sey?"

The man's eyes burned livid, like coals. It was a strange and rather sickening thing, Alan Ma.s.sey thought, to hear him talk like this after having lived the rottenest kind of a life, sunk in slime for years.

"The money is nothing to me," he flung back. "Not now. I thought it was worth considerable when I drove that devilish bargain with you to keep it. It has been worse than nothing, if you care to know. It killed my art--the only decent thing about me--the only thing I had a right to take honest pride in. John Ma.s.sey might have every penny of it to-morrow for all I care if that were all there were to it."

"What else is there?" probed the old man.

"None of your business," snarled Alan. Not for worlds would he have spoken Tony Holiday's name in this spot, under the baleful gleam of those dying eyes.

The man chuckled maliciously.

"You don't need to tell me, I know. There's always a woman in it when a man takes the path to h.e.l.l. Does she want money? Is that why you must hang on to the filthy stuff?"

"She doesn't want anything except what I can't give her, thanks to you and myself--the love of a decent man."

"I see. When we meet _the_ woman we wish we'd sowed fewer wild oats. I went through that myself once. She was a white lily sort of girl and I--well, I'd gone the pace long before I met her. I wasn't fit to touch her and I knew it. I went down fast after that--nothing to keep me back.

Old Shakespeare says something somewhere about our pleasant vices beings whips to goad us with. You and I can understand that, Alan Ma.s.sey. We've both felt the lash."

Alan made an impatient gesture. He did not care to be lumped with this rotten piece of flesh lying there before him.

"I suppose you are wondering what my next move is," went on Roberts.

"I don't care."

"Oh yes, you do. You care a good deal. I can break you, Alan Ma.s.sey, and you know it."

"Go ahead and break and be d.a.m.ned if you choose," raged Alan.

"Exactly. As I choose. And I can keep you dancing on some mighty hot gridirons before I shuffle off. Don't forget that, Alan Ma.s.sey. And there will be several months to dance yet, if the doctors aren't off their count."

"Suit yourself. Don't hurry about dying on my account," said Alan with ironical courtesy.

A few moments later he was on his way back to the station. His universe reeled. All he was sure was that he loved Tony Holiday and would fight to the last ditch to win and keep her and that she would be in his arms to-night for perhaps the last time. The rest was a hideous blur.

CHAPTER XIV

SHACKLES

The evening was a specially gala occasion, with a dinner dance on, the last big party before Tony went home to her Hill. The great ball room at Crest House had been decorated with a network of greenery and crimson rambler roses. A ruinous-priced, _de luxe_ orchestra had been brought down from the city. The girls had saved their prettiest gowns and looked their rainbow loveliest for the crowning event.

Tony was wearing an exquisite white chiffon and silver creation, with silver slippers and a silver fillet binding her dark hair. Alan had sent her some wonderful orchids tied with silver ribbon, and these she wore; but no jewelry whatever, not even a ring. There was something particularly radiant about her young loveliness that night. The young men hovered about her like honey bees about a rose and at every dance they cut in and cut in until her white and silver seemed to be drifting from one pair of arms to another.

Tony was very gay and bountiful and impartial in her smiles and favors, but all the time she waited, knowing that presently would come the one dance to which there would be no cutting in, the dance that would make the others seem nothing but shadows.

By and by the hour struck. She saw Alan leave his place by the window where he had been moodily lounging, saw him come toward her, taller than any man in the room, distinguished--a king among the rest, it seemed to Tony, waiting, longing for his coming? yet half dreading it, too. For the sooner he came, the sooner it must all end. She was with Hal at the moment, waiting for the music to begin, but as Alan approached she turned to her companion with a quick appeal in her eyes and a warm flush on her cheeks.

"I am sorry, Hal," she said, low in his ear. "But this is Alan's. He is going away to-morrow. Forgive me."

Hal turned, stared at Alan Ma.s.sey, turned back to Tony, bowed and moved away.

"Hanged if there isn't something magnificent about the fellow," he thought. "No matter how you detest him there is something about him that gets you. I wonder how far he has gone with Tony. Gee! It's a rotten combination. But Lordy! How they can dance--those two!"

Never as long as she lived was Tony Holiday to forget that dance with Alan Ma.s.sey. As a musician pours himself into his violin, as a poet puts his soul into his sonnet, as a sculptor chisels his dream in marble, so her companion flung his pa.s.sion and despair and imploring into his dancing. They forgot the others, forgot everything but themselves. They might have been dancing alone on the top of Olympus for all either knew or cared for the rest of the world.

It was Alan, not Tony, who brought it to an end, however. He whispered something in the girl's ear and their feet paused. In a moment he was holding open the French window for her to pa.s.s out into the night. The white and silver vanished like a cloud. Alan Ma.s.sey followed. The window swung shut again. The music stopped abruptly as if now its inspiration had come to an end. A single note of a violin quivered off into silence after the others, like the breath of beauty itself pa.s.sing.

Carlotta and her aunt happened to be standing near each other. The girl's eyes were troubled. She wished Alan had not come back at all from the city. She hoped he really intended to go away to-morrow as he had told her. More than all she hoped she was right in believing that Tony had refused to marry him. Like d.i.c.k, Carlotta had reverence for the Holiday tradition. She could not bear to think of Tony's marrying Alan. She felt woefully responsible for having brought the two together.

"Did you say he was going to-morrow?" asked her aunt.

Carlotta nodded.

"He won't go," prophesied Miss Cressy.

"Oh, yes. I think he will. I don't know for certain but I have an idea she refused him this morning."

"Ah, but that was this morning. Things look very different by star light.

That child ought not to be out there with him. She is losing her head."

"Aunt Lottie! Alan is a gentleman," demurred Carlotta.

Miss Lottie smiled satirically. Her smile repeated Ted Holiday's verdict that some gentlemen were rotters.

"You forget, my dear, that I knew Alan Ma.s.sey when you and Tony were in short petticoats and pigtails. You can't trust too much to his gentlemanliness."

"Of course, I know he isn't a saint," admitted Carlotta. "But you don't understand. It is real with Alan this time. He really cares. It isn't just--just the one thing."

"It is always the one thing with Alan Ma.s.sey's kind. I know what I am talking about, Carlotta. He was a little in love with me once. I dare say we both thought it was different at the time. It wasn't. It was pretty much the same thing. Don't cherish any romantic notions about love, Carlotta. There isn't any love as you mean it."

"Oh yes, there is," denied Carlotta suddenly, a little fiercely.

"There is love, but most of us aren't--aren't worthy of it. It is too big for us. That is why we get the cheap _little_ stuff. It is all we are fit for."

Miss Carlotta stared at her niece. But before she could speak Hal Underwood had claimed the latter for a dance.

"H--m!" she mused looking after the two. "So even Carlotta isn't immune.

I wonder who he was."

Meanwhile, out in the garden Tony and Alan had strayed over to the fountain, just as they had that first evening after that first dance.

"Tony, belovedest, let me speak. Listen to me just once more. You do love me. Don't lie to me with your lips when your eyes told me the truth in there. You are mine, mine, my beautiful, my love--all mine."

He drew her into his arms, not pa.s.sionately but gently. It was his gentleness that conquered. A storm of unrestrained emotion would have driven her away from him, but his sudden quiet strength and tenderness melted her last reservation. She gave her lips unresisting to his kiss.

And with that kiss, desire of freedom and all fear left her. For the moment, at least, love was all and enough.