And so Sally had not told him, but when he did ask her to marry him she refused him. His as yet unannounced engagement to Claire Bainbridge had followed swiftly, but his eyes were still pathetically true to Sally. She shifted her position a trifle, so that she could observe Arthur Van Horne out of the corner of her eye. Not that she wanted to see him! She had been forced to see so much of him since the night of her debut party that the very sound of his mocking, drawling voice was obnoxious to her. She would never forget her mother’s terror, her abject pleading and tears. “Don’t antagonize him, darling!” Enid had begged. “He can ruin us, ruin us! Be nice to him, Sally! If—if he was in love with you during those awful carnival days, maybe—” She had hesitated, ashamed to put her hope into words. “Van is really a rather wonderful man, you know, darling. One of the most eligible bachelors in New York society. Old family, no mother or father to dictate to him, a tremendous fortune. Of course, he’s cynical and blase, and rather more experienced than I’d like, but—just be nice to him, darling. Maybe—” That shamefaced “maybe” of Enid’s had kept thrusting itself upon Sally’s rebellious attention ever since. Enid, more frightened of Van’s power over her than she would admit, even to Sally, threw the two together on every possible occasion. After Grant Proctor had retreated from the field, smarting under his refusal by Sally, Enid had almost feverishly concentrated on Van Horne. Sally had stubbornly insisted to her mother that she would not marry any man whom she could not tell the truth about her illegitimacy, and Enid had just as stubbornly refused to consider the possibility of Sally’s telling. “If Van really knows,” she had told Sally in desperation, “that is one too many. You could not possibly harm any man by marrying him without telling. You’re _our_ daughter now—the legally adopted daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Courtney Barr. That is all that matters.” “What matters to me,” Sally had insisted wearily, “is that no man that you would like for me to marry would have me if he knew. I can’t cheat. Of course I don’t have to marry.” “Of course not,” Enid had agreed with assumed gayety. “But since Van does know—Of course, since he already knows, if you married him it would be as much to his interest to forget it and protect me—us—as it is ours. But I want you to be happy, darling.” Sally, her little round chin supported on her laced fingers, her eyes brooding upon the dancer whom she did not see, reflected with an unchildlike bitterness that there was no question now of her being happy. Happiness lay behind her; she had almost grasped it, had been “half-married” to a man she loved. David! His name flashed through her heart like the thrust of a red-hot lancet. “Dance, Sally? Or do you prefer to go on dreaming?” Van Horne’s low, teasing voice interrupted her bitter reverie.