n't tell you
who, and see if the same thing strikes you."

A little later Tony met the "new young man." She was standing with her
friend in the big living room waiting for the signal for dinner when she
felt suddenly conscious of a new presence. She turned quickly and saw a
stranger standing on the threshold regarding her with a rather
disconcertingly intent gaze. He was very tall and foreign-looking,
"different," as Carlotta had said, with thick, waving blue-black hair, a
clear, olive skin and deep-set, gray-green eyes. There was nothing about
him that suggested any resemblance to anyone she knew. Indeed she had a
feeling that there was nobody at all like him anywhere in the world.

The newcomer walked toward her, their glances crossing. Tony stood very
still, but she had an unaccountable sensation of going to meet him, as if
he had drawn her to him, magnet-wise, by his strange, sweeping look. They
were introduced. He bowed low in courtly old world fashion over the
girl's hand.

"I am enchanted to know Miss Holiday," he said. His voice was as unusual
as the rest of him, deep-throated, musical, vibrant--an unforgettable
voice it seemed to Tony who for a moment seemed to have lost her own.

"I shall sit beside Miss Tony to-night, Carla," he added. It was not a
question, not a plea. It was clear assertion.

"Not to-night, Alan. You are between Aunt Lottie and Mary Frances Day.
You liked Mary Frances yesterday. You flirted with her outrageously
last night."

He shrugged.

"Ah, but that was last night, my dear. And this is to-night. And I have
seen your Miss Tony. That alters everything, even your seating
arrangements. Change me, Carlotta."

Carlotta laughed and capitulated. Alan's highhanded tactics always
amused her.

"Not that you deserve it," she said. "Don't be too nice to him, Tony. He
is not a nice person at all."

So it happened that Tony found herself at dinner between Ted's friend,
and her own, Hal Underwood, and this strange, impossible, arbitrary,
new personage who had hypnotized her into unwonted silence at their
first meeting.

She had recovered her usual poise by this time, however, and was quite
prepared to keep Alan Massey in due subjection if necessary. She did not
like masterful men. They always roused her own none too dormant
willfulness.

As they sat down he bent over to her.

"You are glad I made Carlotta put us together," he said, and this, too,
was no question, but an assertion.