“Not yet,” she whispered back.  “Be patient, Alan.  I love you, dear.  Wait.”

The music came to an end.  Many eyes followed the two as they went back to their places at the table.  They were incomparable artists.  It was worth missing one’s own dance to see them have theirs.  Aside from his wonderful dancing and striking personality Alan was at all times a marked figure, attracting attention wherever he went and whatever he did.  The public knew he had a superlative fortune which he spent magnificently as a prince, and that he had a superlative gift which for all they were aware he had flung wantonly away as soon as the money came into his hands.  Moreover he was even more interesting because of his superlatively bad reputation which still followed him.  The public would have found it hard to believe that at last Alan Massey was leading the most temperate and arduous of lives and devoting himself exclusively to one woman whom he treated as reverently as if she were a goddess.  The gazes focussed upon Alan now inevitably included the girl with him, as lovely and young as spring itself.

“Who was she?” they asked each other.  “What was a girl like that doing in Alan Massey’s society?” To most of the observers it meant but one thing, eventually if not now.  Even the most cynical and world-hardened thought it a pity, and these would have been confounded if they could have heard just now his passionate plea for marriage.  One did not associate marriage with Alan Massey.  One had not associated it too much with his mother, one recalled.

CHAPTER XXVII

TROUBLED WATERS

Ted Holiday drifted into Berry’s to buy floral offerings for the reigning goddess who chanced still to be pretty Elsie Hathaway.  Things had gone on gayly since that night a month ago when he had stolen that impudent kiss beneath the crescent moon.  Not that there was anything at all serious about the affair.  College coquettes must have lovers, and Ted Holiday would not have been himself if there had not been a pretty sweetheart on hand.

By this time Ted had far outdistanced the other claimants for Elsie’s favor.  But the victory had come high.  His bank account was again sadly humble in porportions and his bills at Berry’s and at the candy shops were things not to be looked into too closely.  Nevertheless he was in a gala humor that November morning.  Aside from chronic financial complications things were going very well with him.  He was working just hard enough to satisfy his newly-awakened common sense or conscience, or whatever it was that was operating.  He was having a jolly good time with Elsie and basket ball and other things and college life didn’t seem quite such a bore and burden as it had hitherto.  Moreover Uncle Phil had just written that he would waive the ten dollar automobile tax for December in consideration of the approach of Christmas, possibly also in consideration of his nephew’s fairly creditable showing on the new leaf of the ledger though he did not say so.  In any case it was a jolly old world if anybody asked Ted Holiday that morning as he entered Berry’s.