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CHAPTER

III

THe party was a Bingo. Before midnight that had been settled to the satisfaction of everyone. The music, good at the outset, soon become irresistible. (A drink all around every seven numbers was the Fentriss prescription for the musicians; expensive but worth it.) The punch was very special. Several of its masculine devotees had already faded, and one girl had been quietly spirited to an upper room, there to be disrobed and despirited. ‘There was much drifting in and out of the French windows to the darkness of the lawn, and plaintive inquiries for missing partners were prevalent. Lovely, flushed, youthful, regnant in her own special queendom, Mona Fentriss sat in the midst of a circle of the older men, bandying stories with them in voices which were discreetly lowered when any cf the youngsters drew near. It was the top of the time. Upstairs in her remote bed Patricia sat with her pillows banked behind her, her knees propping her chin, her angry eyes staring into the dark. The strong rhythms of

the

music,

barbaric,

excitant,

harshly

sensuous,

throbbed upward, stirring her to dim and uninterpretable hungers. “Damn! Damn! Damn!” she whispered in shivering wrath. She had been banished from even the earliest part of the festivities. It was mean. It was rotten. It was stinkin’ rotten. Why should she. be treated so? She wasn’t a baby. She wouldn’t stand it! B9

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