But Ri-Ri gave this an absent smile. For long, now, she had been leading up to this talk and she felt herself upon the brink of revelations.

. . . Perhaps this Johnny Byrd knew where Barry Elder was. Perhaps they were friends. . . .

"In New York," she told him, "that Leila Grey was at the restaurant with a young man--with the Signor Barry Elder."

"Huh? Barry Elder?"

"Are you,"--she was proud of the splendid indifference of her voice,--"are you a friend of his?"

Uninterestedly, "Oh, I know Barry," Johnny told her. "Bright boy--Barry.

Awful high-brow, though. Wrote a play or something. Not a darn bed in it. Oh, well," said Johnny hastily, with a glance at the girl's young face, "I say, how does this go? Ta _tump_ ti tum ti _tump tump_--what do those words of yours mean?"

"Perhaps this Barry Elder," said Ri-Ri with averted eyes, her hands fluttering the pages, "perhaps he is the one that Leila Grey's attention was upon. Did you not hear that?"

"Who? Barry?"

"Has he not," said the girl desperately, "become recently more desirable to her--more rich, perhaps----"

"That play didn't make him anything, that's sure," the young man meditated. "But seems to me I did hear--something about an uncle shuffling off and leaving him a few thous. . . . Maybe he left enough to buy Leila a supper."

"Here are the English words." Maria Angelina spread the music open before them. "Mrs. Blair was joking with him," she reverted, "because he was not going to that York Harbor this summer where this Leila Grey was.

But perhaps he has gone, after all?"

"Search me," said Johnny negligently. "I'm not his keeper."

"But you would know if he is coming to the dance at the Martins--that dance next week----?"

"He isn't coming to the house party, he's not invited. He and Bob aren't anything chummy at all. Barry trains in an older crowd. . . . Seems to me," said Johnny, turning to look at her out of bright blue eyes, "you're awf'ly interested in this Barry Elder thing. Did you say you met him in New York?"

"I met him--yes," said Maria Angelina, in a steady little voice, beginning suddenly to play. "And I thought it was so romantic--about him and this Leila Grey. She was so beautiful and he had been so brave in the war. And so I wondered----"

"Well, don't you wonder about who's coming to that dance. That dance is _mine_," said Johnny definitely. "I want you to look your darndest--put it all over those flappers. Show them what you got," admonished Johnny with the simple directness in such vogue.

"And now come on, Ri-Ri--let's get into this together.

'I cannot now forget you And you think not of me!'

_Come_ on, Maria Angelina!"

And Maria Angelina, her face lifted, her eyes strangely bright, sang, while Johnny Byrd stared fixedly down at her, angrily, defiantly, sang to that unseen young man--back in the shadows----

"I cannot now forget you And you think not of me!"

And then she told herself that she would forget him very well indeed.

CHAPTER V

BETWEEN DANCES

There had been distinct proprietorship in Johnny's reference to the dance, a hint of possessive admonition, a shade of anxiety to which Maria Angelina was not insensitive.

He wanted her to excel. His pride was calling, unconsciously, upon her, to justify his choice. The dance was an exhibition . . . compet.i.tion. It was the open market . . . appraisal. . . .

No matter how charming she might be in the motor rides with the four, how pretty and piquant in the afternoon at the piano, how melodious in the evenings upon the steps, the full measure of his admiration was not exacted.

Sagely she surmised this. Anxiously she awaited the event.

It was her first real dance. It was her first American affair. Casually, in the evenings at the Lodge, they had danced to the phonograph and she had been initiated into new steps and amazed at the manner of them, but there had been nothing of the slightest formality.

Now the Martins were entertaining over the week-end, and giving a dance to which the neighborhood--meaning the neighborhood of the Martins'

acquaintance--was a.s.sembling.

And again Maria Angelina felt the inrush of fear, the overwhelming timidity of inexperience held at bay by pride alone . . . again she knew the tormenting question which she had confronted in that dim old gla.s.s at the Palazzo Santonini on the day when she had heard of the adventure before her.

She asked it that night of a different gla.s.s, the big, built-in mirror of the dressing-room at the Martins given over to the ladies--a mirror that was a dissolving kaleidoscope of color and motion, of bright silks, bare shoulders and white arms, of pink cheeks, red lips and shining hair.

Advancing shyly among the young girls, filled with divided wonder at their self-possession and their extreme decolletage, Ri-Ri gazed at the gla.s.s timidly, determinedly, fatefully, as one approaches an oracle, and out from the glittering surface was flung back to her a radiant image of rea.s.surance--a vision of a slim figure in filmiest white, slender arms and shoulders bare, dark hair not braided now, but piled high upon her head--a revelation of a nape of neck as young and kissable as a baby's and yet an addition of bewildering years to her immaturity.

To-night she was glad of the white skin, that was a gift from Mamma. The white coral string, against the satin softness of her throat, revealed its opalescent flush. She was immaculate, exquisite, like some figurine of fancy--an image of youth as sweet and innocently troubling as a May night.

"You're a love," said Ruth heartily, appearing at her side, very stunning herself in jade green, with her smooth hair a miracle of shining perfection.

"And you're--different," added Ruth in a slightly puzzled voice, looking her small cousin over with the thoroughness of an inventory. "It must be the hair, Ri-Ri. . . . You've lost that little Saint Susy air."

"But there is no Saint Susy," Ri-Ri interposed gayly, lightly fingering the dark curves of her hair.

Truly--for Johnny--she had done her darndest! Surely he would be pleased.

"If you'd only let me cut that lower--you're simply swaddled in tulle----"

Startled, Maria glanced down at the hollows of her young bosom, at the scantiness of her bodice suspended only by bands of sheerest gauze. She wondered what Mamma would say, if she could see her so, without that drape of net. . . .

"You have the duckiest shoulder blades," said Ruth.

"Oh--do _they_ show?" cried Maria Angelina in dismay. She twisted for a view and the movement drew Ruth's glance along her lithe figure.

"We ought to have cut two inches more off," she declared, and now Ri-Ri's glance fled down to the satin slippers with their crossed ribbons, to the narrow, silken ankles, to the slender legs above the ankles. It seemed to her an utterly limitless exhibition. And Ruth was proposing two more inches!

Apprehensively she glanced about to make sure that no scissors were in prospect.

"But you'll do," Ruth p.r.o.nounced, and in relief Maria Angelina relinquished the center of the mirror, and slipped out into the gallery that ran around three sides of the house.

It was built like a chalet, but Maria Angelina had seen no such chalet in her childish summers in Switzerland. Over the edge of the rail she gazed into the huge hall, cleared now for dancing. The furniture had been pushed back beneath the gallery where it was arranged in intimate little groups for future tete-a-tetes, except a few lounging chairs left on the black bear-skins by the chimney-piece. In one corner a screen of pine boughs and daisies shut off the musicians from the streets, and in the opposite corner an English man-servant was presiding over a huge silver punch bowl.

To Maria Angelina, accustomed to Italian interiors, the note was buoyantly informal. And the luxury of service in this informality was a piquant contrast. . . . No one seemed to care what anything cost. . . .

They gave dances in a log chalet and sent to New York for the favors and to California for the fruit. . . . Into the huge punch-bowl they poured wine of a value now incredible, since the supply could never be replenished. . . .