She had no intention of permitting him to request a dance at this late
hour, however, and rose from her seat as he approached.

"Ah! You, Mr. Quarrington?" she said gaily. "I am just going home. It's
been a charming evening, hasn't it?"

"Charming," he rejoined courteously. "May I see you to your car?"

He offered his arm and Magda, dismissing her little court of disgruntled
admirers with a small gracious nod, laid her slim hand on his sleeve. As
they moved away together the orchestra broke into the swinging seductive
rhythm of a waltz.

Quarrington paused abruptly.

"Don't go yet!" he said. "Dance this with me."

His voice sounded strained and uneven. It was as though the words were
dragged from him without his own volition.

For an instant the two pairs of eyes met--the long, dark ones with their
slumbrous fire brooding beneath white lids, and the keen, hawk-like grey
ones. Then:

"Very well," she answered a trifle breathlessly.

She was almost glad when the waltz came to an end. They had danced it
in utter silence--a tense, packed silence, vibrant with significances
half-hidden, half-understood, and she found herself quivering with a
strange uncertainty and nervousness as she and Quarrington together made
their way into the dim-lit quiet of the winter-garden opening off the
ballroom.

Overhead the green, shining leaves of stephanotis spread a canopy, pale
clusters of its white, heavy-scented bloom gleaming star-like in the
faint light of Chinese lanterns swung from the leaf-clad roof. From
somewhere near at hand came the silvery, showering plash of a fountain
playing--a delicate and aerial little sound against the robust harmonies
of the band, like the notes of a harp.

It seemed to Magda as though she and Michael had left the world behind
them and were quite alone, enfolded in the sweet-scented, tender silence
of some Garden of Eden.

They stood together without speaking. In every tingling nerve of her she
was acutely conscious of his proximity and of some rapidly rising tide
of emotion mounting within him. She knew the barrier against which it
beat and a little cry escaped her, forced from her by some impulse that
was stronger than herself.

"Oh, Saint Michel! Can't you--can't you believe in me?"

He swung round at the sound of her voice and the next moment she was
crushed against his breast, his mouth on hers, his kisses burning their
way to her very heart. . . .

Then voices, quick, light foot