“What did you mean when you said it would be ‘very wise’ for me to love you a little?” she persisted, too tired to be diplomatic. But of course she knew. He held her mother’s security and happiness in the hollow of his hand. That he could destroy her own social career if he wished did not occur to her, for she had not yet learned to care about it, to prize it. But Enid must be protected at all costs. “I think you know,” Van Horne shrugged. “But why put it into words? Some things are much nicer unsaid, if they are distinctly understood. Now—will you kiss me, Sally? I’ve waited a long time, sweet child, and I’m naturally not a patient man.” “Not tonight,” Sally said in a low, flat voice, shrinking into her own corner of the seat. “Please turn at One Hundred and Tenth street and take me back home, Van. I’m utterly tired.” Van obeyed cheerfully, exultant over her indirect promise. Sally was creeping exhaustedly up the stairs to her room, her mother, still dressed in her formal ball gown, came hurrying frantically down to meet her. “Darling, where have you been? I’ve been crazy with worry! How _could_ you go out and meet that Nash boy so brazenly? Tonight of all nights!” “It wasn’t David, Mother,” Sally said in a dead-tired voice. “It was Arthur Van Horne. He—knows—all about me. He’s known all along.” Five weeks later—it was in early January, just before the annual scurrying of self-coddling society folk from the rigors of a New York winter to the sunshine of Palm Beach and Nassau—Sally Barr, “one of the season’s most beautiful debutantes,” as the society editors called her, sat at a table for six in one of New York’s most exclusive night clubs. She was thankful for the fact that an inhumanly flexible male dancer was doing his most incredible tricks for the amusement of the club’s patrons, for watching him gave her an opportunity to think, an excuse for not chattering brightly as debutantes were expected to do. Grant Proctor, whom Enid had hoped she would marry, sat opposite her, Arthur Van Horne on her right. Beside Grant, twittering and giggling, was Claire Bainbridge, whose engagement to the heir of the Proctor millions would be announced from Palm Beach. And yet Sally was conscious that Grant’s nice, leaf-brown eyes followed her with a frustrated, doglike devotion whenever she was near him. He had told her that he loved her, and Sally, terribly anxious to please her mother and to secure Enid Barr’s safety from scandal, had been ready to listen to his proposal of marriage. Since David was lost to her, it did not much matter whom she married. “But if he asks me to marry him, Mother, I’ll have to tell him the truth about my birth,” Sally had told Enid. Now, with her wistful eyes apparently watching the agile dancer, she remembered Enid’s horrified protest. “You can’t tell him, Sally! He wouldn’t marry you if he knew. His parents wouldn’t let him. Promise me you won’t tell, darling!”