und top floated, pale and dreamy, as the
dome of Saint Peter's at twilight.

From the terrace stretched a grassy path where other couples were
strolling and Johnny Byrd guided her past them. They walked in silence.
He kept his hand on her arm and from time to time glanced about at her
in a half-constraint that was no part of his usual air.

At a curve of the path the girl drew definitely back.

"Ah no----"

"Oh, why not? Isn't it the custom?" He laughed over the often-cited
phrase but absently. His eyes had a warm, hurrying look in them that
rooted her feet the more stubbornly to the ground.

"Decidedly not." She turned a merriment lighted face to him. "To walk
alone with a young man--between dances--beneath the moon!"

Maria Angelina shuddered and cast impish eyes at heaven.

"Honestly?" Johnny demanded. "Do you mean to tell me you've never walked
between dances with young men?"

"I tell you that I have never even danced with a young man until----"
She flashed away from that memory. "Until I came to America. I am not
yet in Italian society. I have never been presented. It is not yet my
time."

"But--but don't the sub debs have any good times over there? Don't you
have dances of your own? Don't you meet fellows? Don't you know
anybody?" Johnny demanded with increasing amazement at each new shake of
her head.

"Oh, come," he protested. "You can't put that over me. I'll bet you've
got a bagful of fellows crazy about you. Don't you ever slip out on an
errand, you know, and find some one waiting round the corner----?"

"You are speaking of the customs of my maid, perhaps," said Maria
Angelina with becoming young haughtiness. "For myself, I do not go upon
errands. I have never been upon the streets alone."

Johnny Byrd stared. With a supreme effort of credulity he envisaged the
fact. Perhaps it was really so. Perhaps she was just as sequestered and
guileless and inexperienced as that. It was ridiculous. It was amusing.
It was--somehow--intriguing.

With his hand upon her bare arm he drew her closer.

"Ri-Ri--honest now--is this the first----?"

She drew away instinctively before the suppressed excitement of him. Her
heart beat fast; her hands were very cold. She knew elation . . . and
panic . . . and dread and hope.

It was for this she had come. Young and rich and free! What more would
Mamma ask? What greater triumph could be hers?

"I'd like to make a lot of other things the first, too," muttered
John