ver until next week for the
Merriweathers' ball."

"I didn't know whether you would feel equal to it."

"I shall go on Mary's account. It will be her introduction to Truxton's
friends, and if I am there it will be easier for her. She has a lovely
frock, jade green tulle with a girdle of gold brocade. It came down for
me with a lot of other clothes, and it needed only a few changes for her
to wear it."

"You will be glad to get away?"

"It will be cooler--and I need the change. But it is always more formal
up there--they remember that I have money. Here it is forgotten."

"I wish I could forget it."

"Why should you ever think of it?" she demanded with some heat. "I am
the same Becky with or without it."

"Not quite the same," he was turning his hat in his hand. Then, raising
his eyes and looking at her squarely, he said what he had come to say; "I
have--I have just been to see Dalton, Becky."

A wave of red washed over her neck, touched her chin, her cheeks. "I
don't see what that has to do with me."

"It has a great deal to do with you. I told him you were going to marry
me."

The wave receded. She was chalk-white.

"Randy, how dared you do such a thing?"

"I dared," said Randy, with tense fierceness, "because a man like Dalton
wants what other men want. He will think about you a lot, and I want him
to think. He won't sleep to-night, and I want him to stay awake. He
will wonder whether you love me, and he will be afraid that you do--and I
want him to be afraid."

"But it was a lie, Randy. I am not going to marry you."

"Do you think that I meant that----? That I am expecting anything for
myself?"

"No," unsteadily, her slender body trembling as if from cold, "but what
did you mean?"

"I told you. Dalton's got to come back to you and beg--on his knees--and
he will come when he thinks you are mine----"

"I don't want him to come. And when you talk like that it makes me
feel--smirched----"

Dead silence. Then, "It was a gentleman's lie----"

"Gentlemen do not lie. Go to him this minute, Randy, and tell him that
it isn't true."

"Give me three days, Becky. If in that time he doesn't try to see you or
call you up, I'll go---- But give me three days."

She wavered. "What good will it do?"

He caught up her cold little hands in his. "You will have a chance to
get back at him. And when you stick in the knife, you can turn it--until
it hurts."

III

It was while the fa