“How many times?”

“Not at all.”

“Indeed!  And does his Dick Highmightiness object to your dancing with me?”

“Dick!  Of course not.  He hasn’t anything to do with it.  I am not going to dance with you because you are behaving abominably to-day, and you did yesterday and the day before that.  I think you are nearly always abominable, in fact.”

“Still, I am one of the best dancers in the world.  It is a temptation, is it not, my own?”

He smiled his slow, tantalizing smile and, in spite of herself, Tony smiled back.

“It is,” she admitted.  “You are a heavenly dancer, Alan.  There is no denying it.  If you were Mephisto himself I think I would dance with you—­occasionally.”

“And to-night?”

“Once,” relented Tony.  “There come the others at last.”  And she ran off down the yellow sands like a modern Atalanta.

“My, but Tony is pretty to-night!” murmured Carlotta to Alan, who chanced to be standing near her as her friend fluttered by with Dick.  “She looks like a regular flame in that scarlet chiffon.  It is awfully daring, but she is wonderful in it.”

“She is always wonderful,” muttered Alan moodily, watching the slender, graceful figure whirl and trip and flash down the floor like a gay poppy petal caught in the wind.

Carlotta turned.  Something in Alan’s tone arrested her attention.

“Alan, I believe, it is real with you at last,” she said.  Up to that moment she had considered his affair with Tony as merely another of his many adventures in romance, albeit possibly a slightly more extravagant one than usual.

“Of course it is real—­real as Hell,” he retorted.  “I’m mad over her, Carla.  I am going to marry her if I have to kill every man in the path to get to her,” savagely.

“I am sorry, Alan.  You must see Tony is not for the like of you.  You can’t get to her.  I wish you wouldn’t try.”

Dick and Tony passed close to them again.  Tony was smiling up at her partner and he was looking down at her with a gaze that betrayed his caring.  Neither saw Alan and Carlotta.  The savage light gleamed brighter in Alan’s green eyes.

“Carlotta, is there anything between them?” he demanded fiercely.

“Nothing definite.  He adores her, of course, and she is very fond of him.  She feels as if he sort of belonged to her, I think.  You know the story?”

“Tell me.”

Briefly Carlotta outlined the tale of how Dick had taken refuge in the Holiday barn when he had run away from the circus, and how Tony had found him, sick and exhausted from fatigue, hunger and abuse; how the Holidays had taken him in and set him on his feet, and Tony had given him her own middle name of Carson since he had none of his own.

Alan listened intently.

“Did he ever get any clue as to his identity?” he asked as Carlotta paused.

“Never.”