“Oh yes, there is,” denied Carlotta suddenly, a little fiercely.  “There is love, but most of us aren’t—­aren’t worthy of it.  It is too big for us.  That is why we get the cheap little stuff.  It is all we are fit for.”

Miss Carlotta stared at her niece.  But before she could speak Hal Underwood had claimed the latter for a dance.

“H—­m!” she mused looking after the two.  “So even Carlotta isn’t immune.  I wonder who he was.”

Meanwhile, out in the garden Tony and Alan had strayed over to the fountain, just as they had that first evening after that first dance.

“Tony, belovedest, let me speak.  Listen to me just once more.  You do love me.  Don’t lie to me with your lips when your eyes told me the truth in there.  You are mine, mine, my beautiful, my love—­all mine.”

He drew her into his arms, not passionately but gently.  It was his gentleness that conquered.  A storm of unrestrained emotion would have driven her away from him, but his sudden quiet strength and tenderness melted her last reservation.  She gave her lips unresisting to his kiss.  And with that kiss, desire of freedom and all fear left her.  For the moment, at least, love was all and enough.

“Tony, my belovedest,” he whispered.  “Say it just once.  Tell me you love me.”  It was the old, old plea, but in Tony’s ears it was immortally new.

“I love you, Alan.  I didn’t want to.  I have fought it all along as you know.  But it was no use.  I do love you.”

“My darling!  And I love you.  You don’t know how I love you.  It is like suddenly coming out into sunshine after having lived in a cave all my life.  Will you marry me to-morrow, carissima?”

But she drew away from his arms at that.

“Alan, I can’t marry you ever.  I can only love you.”

“Why not?  You must, Tony!” The old masterfulness leaped into his voice.

“I cannot, Alan.  You know why.”

She lifted her eyes to his and in their clear depths he saw reflected his own willful, stained, undisciplined past.  He bowed his head in real shame and remorse.  Nothing stood between himself and Antoinette Holiday but himself.  He had sown the wind.  He reaped the whirlwind.

After a moment he looked up again.  He made no pretence of misunderstanding her meaning.

“You couldn’t forgive?” he pleaded brokenly.  Gone was the royal-willed Alan Massey.  Only a beggar in the dust remained.

“Yes, Alan.  I could forgive.  I do now.  I think I can understand how such things can be in a man’s life though it would break my heart to think Ted or Larry were like that.  But you never had a chance.  Nobody ever helped you to keep your eyes on the stars.”

“They are there now,” he groaned.  “You are my star, Tony, and stars are very, very far away from the like of me,” he echoed Carlotta’s phrase.

For almost the first time in his life humility possessed him.  Had he known it, it lifted him higher in Tony’s eyes than all his arrogance and conceit of power had ever done.