to her at that moment in syllables faintly slurred. “This seems to be getting to be a habit.”
They were standing near a side stairs, and over his shoulder through a glass door Yanci could see a party of half a dozen men sitting in familiar joviality about a round table.
“Don’t you want to come out and watch for awhile?” she suggested, smiling and affecting a casualness she did not feel.
“Not tonight, thanks.”
Her father’s dignity was a bit too emphasized to be convincing.
“Just come out and take a look,” she urged him. “Everybody’s here, and I want to ask you what you think of somebody.”
This was not so good, but it was the best that occurred to her.
“I doubt very strongly if I’d find anything to interest me out there,” said Tom Bowman emphatically. “I observe that f’some insane reason I’m always taken out and aged on the wood for half an hour as though I was irresponsible.”
“I only ask you to stay a little while.”
“Very considerate, I’m sure. But tonight I happ’n be interested in a discussion that’s taking place in here.”
“Come on, Father.”
Yanci put her arm through his ingratiatingly; but he released it by the simple expedient of raising his own arm and letting hers drop.
“I’m afraid not.”
“I’ll tell you,” she suggested lightly, concealing her annoyance at this unusually protracted argument, “you come in and look, just once, and then if it bores you you can go right back.”
He shook his head.
“No thanks.”
Then without another word he turned suddenly and reentered the bar. Yanci went back to the ballroom. She glanced easily at the stag line as she passed, and making a quick selection murmured to a man near her, “Dance with me, will you, Carty? I’ve lost my partner.”
“Glad to,” answered Carty truthfully.
“Awfully sweet of you.”
“Sweet of me? Of you, you mean.”
She looked up at him absently. She was furiously annoyed at her father. Next morning at breakfast she would radiate a consuming chill, but for tonight she could only wait, hoping that if the worst happened he would at least remain in the bar until the dance was over.
Mrs. Rogers, who lived next door to the Bowmans, appeared suddenly at her elbow with a strange young man.
“Yanci,” Mrs. Rogers was saying with a social smile. “I want to introduce Mr. Kimberly. Mr. Kimberly’s spending the week-end with us, and I particularly wanted him to meet you.”
“How perfectly slick!” drawled Yanci with lazy formality.
Mr. Kimberly suggested to Miss Bowman that they dance, to which proposal Miss Bowman dispassionately acquiesced. They mingled their arms in the gesture prevalent and stepped into time with the beat of the drum. Simultaneously it seemed to Scott that the room and the couples who danced up and down upon it converted themselves into a background behind her. The commonplace lamps, the rhythm of the music playing some paraphrase of a paraphrase, the faces of many girls, pretty, undistinguished or absurd, assumed a certain solidity as though they had grouped themselves in a retinue for Yanci’s languid eyes and dancing feet.
“I’ve been watching you,” said Scott simply. “You look rather bored this evening.”
“Do I?” Her dark-blue eyes exposed a borderland of fragile iris as they opened in a delicate burlesque of interest. “How perfectly kill-ing!” she added.
Scott laughed. She had used the exaggerated phrase without smiling, indeed without any attempt to give it verisimilitude. He had heard the adjectives of the year—“hectic,” “marvelous” and “slick”—delivered casually, but never before without the faintest meaning. In this lackadaisical young beauty it was inexpressibly charming.
The dance ended. Yanci and Scott strolled toward a lounge set against the wall, but before they could take possession there was a shriek of laughter and a brawny damsel dragging an embarrassed boy in her wake skidded by them and plumped down upon it.
“How rude!” observed Yanci.
“I suppose it’s her privilege.”
“A girl with ankles like that has no privileges.”
They seated themselves uncomfortably on two stiff chairs.
“Where do you come from?” she asked of Scott with polite disinterest.
“New York.”
This having transpired, Yanci deigned to fix her eyes on him for the best part of ten seconds.
“Who was the gentleman with the invisible tie,” Scott asked rudely, in order to make her look at him again, “who was giving you such a rush? I found it impossible to keep my eyes off him. Is his personality as diverting as his haberdashery?”
“I don’t know,” she drawled; “I’ve only been engaged to him for a week.”
“My Lord!” exclaimed Scott, perspiring suddenly under his eyes.
“I beg your pardon. I didn’t——”
“I was only joking,” she interrupted with a sighing laugh. “I thought I’d see what you’d say to that.”
Then they both laughed, and Yanci continued, “I’m not engaged to anyone. I’m too horribly unpopular.” Still the same key, her languorous voice humorously contradicting the content of her remark. “No one’ll ever marry me.”
“How pathetic!”
“Really,” she murmured; “because I have to have compliments all the time, in order to live, and no one thinks I’m attractive anymore, so no one ever gives them to me.”
Seldom had Scott been so amused.
“Why, you beautiful child,” he cried, “I’ll bet you never hear anything else from morning till night!”
“Oh, yes I do,” she responded, obviously pleased. “I never get compliments unless I fish for them.”
“Everything’s the same,” she was thinking as she gazed around her in a peculiar mood of pessimism. Same boys sober and same boys tight; same old women sitting by the walls—and one or two girls sitting with them who were dancing this time last year.
Yanci had reached the stage where these country-club dances seemed little more than a display of sheer idiocy. From being an enchanted carnival where jeweled and immaculate maidens rouged to the pinkest propriety displayed themselves to strange and fascinating men, the picture had faded to a medium-sized hall where was an almost indecent display of unclothed motives and obvious failures. So much for several years! And the dance had changed scarcely by a ruffle in the fashions or a new flip in a figure of speech.
Yanci was ready to be married.
Meanwhile the dozen remarks rushing to Scott Kimberly’s lips were interrupted by the apologetic appearance of Mrs. Rogers.
“Yanci,” the older woman was saying, “the chauffeur’s just telephoned to say that the car’s broken down. I wonder if you and your father have room for us going home. If it’s the slightest inconvenience don’t hesitate to tell——”
“I know he’ll be terribly glad to. He’s got loads of room, because I came out with someone else.”
She was wondering if her father would be presentable at twelve.
He could always drive at any rate—and, besides, people who asked for a lift could take what