“I am sorry, Hal,” she said, low in his ear.  “But this is Alan’s.  He is going away to-morrow.  Forgive me.”

Hal turned, stared at Alan Massey, turned back to Tony, bowed and moved away.

“Hanged if there isn’t something magnificent about the fellow,” he thought.  “No matter how you detest him there is something about him that gets you.  I wonder how far he has gone with Tony.  Gee!  It’s a rotten combination.  But Lordy!  How they can dance—­those two!”

Never as long as she lived was Tony Holiday to forget that dance with Alan Massey.  As a musician pours himself into his violin, as a poet puts his soul into his sonnet, as a sculptor chisels his dream in marble, so her companion flung his passion and despair and imploring into his dancing.  They forgot the others, forgot everything but themselves.  They might have been dancing alone on the top of Olympus for all either knew or cared for the rest of the world.

It was Alan, not Tony, who brought it to an end, however.  He whispered something in the girl’s ear and their feet paused.  In a moment he was holding open the French window for her to pass out into the night.  The white and silver vanished like a cloud.  Alan Massey followed.  The window swung shut again.  The music stopped abruptly as if now its inspiration had come to an end.  A single note of a violin quivered off into silence after the others, like the breath of beauty itself passing.

Carlotta and her aunt happened to be standing near each other.  The girl’s eyes were troubled.  She wished Alan had not come back at all from the city.  She hoped he really intended to go away to-morrow as he had told her.  More than all she hoped she was right in believing that Tony had refused to marry him.  Like Dick, Carlotta had reverence for the Holiday tradition.  She could not bear to think of Tony’s marrying Alan.  She felt woefully responsible for having brought the two together.

“Did you say he was going to-morrow?” asked her aunt.

Carlotta nodded.

“He won’t go,” prophesied Miss Cressy.

“Oh, yes.  I think he will.  I don’t know for certain but I have an idea she refused him this morning.”

“Ah, but that was this morning.  Things look very different by star light.  That child ought not to be out there with him.  She is losing her head.”

“Aunt Lottie!  Alan is a gentleman,” demurred Carlotta.

Miss Lottie smiled satirically.  Her smile repeated Ted Holiday’s verdict that some gentlemen were rotters.

“You forget, my dear, that I knew Alan Massey when you and Tony were in short petticoats and pigtails.  You can’t trust too much to his gentlemanliness.”

“Of course, I know he isn’t a saint,” admitted Carlotta.  “But you don’t understand.  It is real with Alan this time.  He really cares.  It isn’t just—­just the one thing.”

“It is always the one thing with Alan Massey’s kind.  I know what I am talking about, Carlotta.  He was a little in love with me once.  I dare say we both thought it was different at the time.  It wasn’t.  It was pretty much the same thing.  Don’t cherish any romantic notions about love, Carlotta.  There isn’t any love as you mean it.”