estra was playing in the music room.
The dance would begin shortly. There were delicately constructed,
gold-tinted chairs about the walls and behind palms.

He looked down into her eyes--those excited, life-loving, eager eyes.

"You're quite full up. Let me see. Nine, ten, eleven. Well, that will be
enough. I don't suppose I shall want to dance very much. It's nice to be
popular."

"I'm not sure about number three. I think that's a mistake. You might
have that if you wish."

She was falsifying.

"It doesn't matter so much about him, does it?"

His cheeks flushed a little as he said this.

"No."

Her own flamed.

"Well, I'll see where you are when it's called. You're darling. I'm
afraid of you." He shot a level, interpretive glance into her eyes, then
left. Aileen's bosom heaved. It was hard to breathe sometimes in this
warm air.

While he was dancing first with Mrs. Cowperwood and later with Mrs.
Seneca Davis, and still later with Mrs. Martyn Walker, Cowperwood had
occasion to look at Aileen often, and each time that he did so there
swept over him a sense of great vigor there, of beautiful if raw,
dynamic energy that to him was irresistible and especially so to-night.
She was so young. She was beautiful, this girl, and in spite of his
wife's repeated derogatory comments he felt that she was nearer to his
clear, aggressive, unblinking attitude than any one whom he had yet seen
in the form of woman. She was unsophisticated, in a way, that was plain,
and yet in another way it would take so little to make her understand so
much. Largeness was the sense he had of her--not physically, though she
was nearly as tall as himself--but emotionally. She seemed so intensely
alive. She passed close to him a number of times, her eyes wide and
smiling, her lips parted, her teeth agleam, and he felt a stirring
of sympathy and companionship for her which he had not previously
experienced. She was lovely, all of her--delightful.

"I'm wondering if that dance is open now," he said to her as he drew
near toward the beginning of the third set. She was seated with her
latest admirer in a far corner of the general living-room, a clear floor
now waxed to perfection. A few palms here and there made embrasured
parapets of green. "I hope you'll excuse me," he added, deferentially,
to her companion.

"Surely," the latter replied, rising.

"Yes, indeed," she replied. "And you'd better stay here with me. It's
going to begin soon. You