of you to come."
He seized her hand to wring it with ardor, but its pressure was so lax that he refrained. His eyes, however, were so fervid that she looked away. For lack of support his hopes dropped like a flying-machine that meets a "hole in the air."
CHAPTER XIII
SHE was talking the most indifferent nothings as they went up the stairs to the dancing-room, a largish space with an encircling gallery. As usual the dancing-floor was a clearing in a thicket of tables. It was swarming already with couples engaged in the same jig as the night before.
The costumes were duller than at night, of course. Most of the men wore business suits; the women were not décolletées, and they kept on their hats.
Only Forbes noted at once that the crowd included many very young girls and mere lads. Here, too, there was a jumbled mixture of plebeian and aristocrat and all the grades between. There were girls who seemed to have been wanton in their cradles, and girls who were aureoled with an innocence that made their wildest hilarity a mere scamper of wholesome spirits.
An eccentricity of this restaurant was a searchlight stationed in the balcony. The operator swept the floor with its rays, occasionally fastening on a pair of professional dancers, and following it through the maze, whimsically changing the colors of the light to red or green or blue. For the general public the light was kept rosy.
When Forbes arrived a certain couple whirled madly off the dancing-floor straight into the midst of Persis' guests, with the havoc of a strike in a game of tenpins.
The young man's heel ground one of the buttons of Forbes' shoe deep into his instep, and the young girl's flying hand smote him in the nose. He needed all his self-control to repress a yowl of pain and dismay. Persis must have suffered equal battery, but she quietly straightened out the dizzy girl and smiled.
"Come right in, Alice; don't stop to knock."
The girl under whose feet the floor still eddied clung to Persis and stared at her a second, then gasped:
"Oh, Miss Cabot, is it you? I must have nearly killed you. Can you ever ever forgive me?"
Persis patted her hand and turned her round to Forbes: "You'd better ask Mr. Forbes. You gave him a lovely black eye."
The girl acknowledged the introduction with a duck and a prayer of wild appeal:
"Oh, Mr. Forbes, what a ghastly, ghastly shame! Did I really hurt you? I must have simply murdered you. I'm so ashamed. Can you ever ever forgive me?"
Forbes smiled at her melodramatic agitation: "It's nothing at all, Miss—Miss—I never liked this nose, anyway. I only wish you had hit it harder, Miss—"
"Miss Neff," Persis prompted. "You met her mother last night."
Forbes vaguely remembered that somebody had said something about a beautiful mother of a more beautiful daughter; but he could not frame it into a speech, before Persis startled the girl beyond reach of a pretty phrase, by casually asking:
"Were you expecting to meet your mother here this afternoon, Alice?"
"Good Lord, I should say not! Why?"
"I just wondered. She is to meet us here."
"When? In heaven's name! When?"
"She ought to be here now."
Alice thrust backward a palsied hand and, clutching the young man she had danced with, dragged him forward. He was shaking hands with Ten Eyck, and brought him along.
"Stowe! Stowe!" Alice exclaimed, with a tragic fire that did not greatly alarm the young man; he was apparently used to little else from her.
"Yes, dear," he answered, with a lofty sweetness; and she cried:
"Oh, honey, what do you suppose?"
"What, dear?"
"That awful Mother of mine is expected here any moment!"
The young man's majesty collapsed like an overblown balloon in one pop: "Lord!"
Tableau! Ten Eyck, seeing it, muttered, gloatingly:
"Some folks gits ketched."
Alice turned eyes of reproach upon him:
"She'll kill us if she finds us together. Isn't there some other way out?"
"I could go down the stairs the waiters come up," said Stowe; "but how will you get home?"
"Oh, Mother will get me home all right, never fear!" said Alice. "Run for your life, honey. I'll have my maid call you on the 'phone later."
The young man gave her one long sad look fairly reeking with desperate kisses and embraces. Then he vanished into the crowd.
Alice must have remarked the comments in Forbes' eyes, for she turned to him:
"You mustn't misunderstand the poor boy, Mr. Forbes. Mr. Webb is as brave as a lion, but he runs away on my account. He knows that my mother will give me no rest if she finds it out."
"I understand perfectly," said Forbes. "There are times when the better a soldier is the faster he runs!"
"Mr. Forbes is a soldier," Persis explained.
"Oh, thank you, twice as much!" said Alice, "for appreciating the situation." Then she turned to Persis, and clenched her arm as if she were about to implore some unheard-of mercy: "And, Oh, Miss Cabot, will you do me one terribly great favor? I'll remember it to my dying day, if you only will."
"Of course, my dear," Persis answered, with her usual serenity. "What is it? Do you want me to tell your mother that I met you somewhere and dragged you here against your will to meet her?"
Alice's wide eyes widened to the danger-point:
"Aren't you simply wonderful! How on earth could you possibly have ever ever guessed it?"
Persis cast a sidelong glance at Forbes; it had all the effect of a wink without being so violent.
"I'm a mind-reader," she said.
Alice caught the glance but not the irony of it, and exclaimed:
"Indeed she is, Mr. Forbes. She really is."
"I know she is," said Forbes, with a quiet conviction that was almost more noisy than the violent emphasis of Alice.
Persis gave Forbes another sidelong glance; this time with a meek wonderment in place of irony. Once more the man had shown a kind of awe of her. Unwittingly he was attacking her on her most defenseless wall; for a woman who is always hearing praise of her beauty or her vivacity, so
