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away. Shall we?" His hand covered hers on the table. "Please!"

He had made the entreaty innumerable times, but never quite in this way. There was a sort of desperation in his tone, and something very like fear in his eyes. He felt Yvonne's hand tremble, and was sure that she shared this strange indecipherable new emotion which filled him . . . until she spoke. Her words were light, and tinkling-cool as little icicles. "What on earth is the matter with you tonight, Jock Hamill?"

"I don't know," he answered hopelessly. "I just—have the damnedest funny feeling——"

Then through the smoke and the tired air, Cecily came toward them. She seemed to dance toward them, like a bright autumn leaf in the wind—radiantly alive, quickening the pulses. She wore a brocaded evening cloak with a vast fur collar, and above it her eyes shone and her sweet full lips smiled a smile that said, "Come on! Life's fun! Come and play with me!"

A young man walked just behind her, and as soon as he beheld this young man Jock thought, "She'll marry him. Any girl would." . . . There was a beauty-parlor look about Bill Burnholme. His crisp fair hair waved as though fresh from a marceling iron, so that you were tempted to lay your fingers along its perfect undulations. His eyebrows grew thick at the nose and thin over the temples, like a tweezered flapper's. His eyes—blue eyes, almost violet—were set in tangled dark lashes. But to counteract the effect of these too-faultless attributes, he had a great sinewy body, blunt hands with callouses below the fingers, and a careless, collegiate, thoroughly masculine manner. So men forgave him the beauty of his face, and women adored it the more.