gravity her inquisitor must
surely have sought a different topic.

Yet the intimacy was a fact,--one of those odd facts which life
persists in producing. They had shared an apartment (that is a nice
compliment, that phrase, applied to their sitting-room, bedroom and
bath) for almost a year, continuing in a state of amiability possible
only between two people so widely separated in ideals and hopes that
there could never be a clash. There had never been much companionship,
however. Now and then they ate one meal together, an early dinner for
Cecille and a late breakfast for Felicity, at six o'clock in the
evening. For Cecille's working day was over before Felicity's began.
But there had been no intimacy of the spirit. And yet each knew the
soul of the other as well as though it had been a meal sack which could
be turned inside out, exposing every seam to scrutiny.

Felicity Brown belonged to the Midnight Roof Club's famous Aero Octet.
That is, of course, a needless bit of information, presumptuous even to
the initiate, for everybody knows her, almost everybody. She was the
third from the left, the one in new-grass green, with balloons pendant
from the scalloped corners of her short, stiff-wired skirt--black
balloons like huge dull pearls. The one with the smile. Yes, I know
that the others smiled, too, constantly, provocatively; but sometimes
the set of their lips was likely to seem anything but the curl of
mirth. But not Felicity's.

It never lost its challenge. And her dancing was like that, tireless,
serenely abandoned, the essence of knowing grace. Half-pagan,
half-divine, Denby, the young cover artist, badly smitten, once put it
with striking unoriginality. And with exceeding inaccuracy, too. For
there are all too many who will insist that the pagan portion rather
over-balanced the rest. But her sheer vitality was amazing.

An unobserving person, still seeking the key to their intimacy, could
easily blunder upon the old bromide and repeat that a pretty woman
invariably prefers a plain one for a foil. But he would have to be a
very blind fool indeed. For Felicity Brown's beauty, perfect enough
under the spot of the Midnight Club's miniature stage, became a less
flawless thing in contrast with Cecille. Perhaps that sounds
far-fetched. Perhaps, having seen Felicity for yourself, you are
inclined to smile and shrug. Nevertheless it is so.

Not one of a million Denbys would ever have called Cecil