into his eyes, "but there's a
queer kind of light coming into your eyes, a sort of dancing, jumping
yellow flame that makes them look almost red. Well, your eyes are
almost exactly like mine, and mine are like my mother's, and whenever
she'd got so far on with drink that she couldn't stop I used to see that
light in her eyes. Of course I don't say that it means anything; still,
there it is. I used to call it the danger signal, and keep away from her
as much as I could till it was over, and I had to nurse her back to
something like life."

"That's rather approaching the creepy," said Maxwell, with an almost
imperceptible shrug of his shoulders. He had no feeling of offence now.
She looked so pretty and she spoke so earnestly that it was impossible
to be offended with her. Moreover, although he was far from even getting
drunk, he felt a dreamy sensation stealing over him which seemed to be
sapping his self-restraint and making him utterly careless of what he
did or what happened to him so long as it was only pleasant.

"Really, it is decidedly curious," he went on. "I hope I haven't got the
makings of a dipsomaniac in me. But I feel quite curiously happy, and I
believe I could just go on drinking and getting happier and happier
until I landed in Paradise with you standing just inside the gates to
welcome me."

"Don't!" she said almost sharply. "For goodness sake don't begin to talk
like that. That's just how my mother used to feel, just how she used to
talk, and she did go on--of course, there was no one to stop her. You
should have seen her a couple of days after--a savage, an animal, a wild
beast, only wild beasts don't get drunk. It's not a nice thing to say of
your mother, even such a mother as mine was, but it's true, and I'm
telling you because I like you, and it may do you some good."

"Thank you, Miss Carol! After that I shall certainly take your advice,"
he said, pouring his cognac into his coffee. "This is the last drink
to-night, and that reminds me; it's getting rather late. How about going
home?"

"I think it's about time," she said. "They close at twelve to-night, you
know. Which way do you go?"

"Which way do _you_ go?" he said, as he beckoned to the waiter for the
bill. "By the way, I was going to ask you--I hope you have never seen
that light, that danger signal, in your own eyes?"

She ignored his first question _in toto_, and replied:

"Yes, I saw it once when I got home after a pretty wild sup