Robin looked down at her. Her dark head didn’t come more than halfway up his breast, so he couldn’t see her eyes. But he felt a strange stiffness in her attitude, a resentment. Robin had a faculty of gauging Ivy’s moods without a word from her. Almost at once the anticipated pleasure of the evening began to wane. Ivy was sore because he knew May Sutherland well enough to speak to her. She would go out of her way to make him feel her displeasure. She would want to hurt him, and she would be extremely nice to Mark Steele, or some other man, just to spite him. More than likely she would choose to use Steele as a foil. With what Robin knew of Mark’s raiding Mayne’s stock and Mark’s attitude toward himself Robin foresaw some unpleasant moments ahead. For a fleeting instant he wished he hadn’t come. Then he felt ashamed of himself for such a weakness, annoyed at anticipation of trouble and a wish to avoid it. Time enough to worry when trouble lifted its ugly head. “Floor’s good,” he remarked to Ivy. “I feel like I had wings on.” “Yes,” she drawled with a rising inflection. “Look out you don’t fly too high.” “Wha’s a molla, hon?” he wheedled. “You’re not goin’ to have a grouch about nothin’, are you?” Ivy looked up at him. It happened that at that precise instant Robin’s gaze was on May and her partner. Ivy’s dark eyes glowed. “I will if you dance with that stuck-up thing,” she whispered tensely. “Promise me you won’t.” “Ivy,” he protested. “What the dickens has got into you all at once?” “She thinks she’s so darned smart,” Ivy muttered. Robin had fully intended to dance with May Sutherland because dancing with her would afford the only opportunity they would have to talk and he had scarcely realized how eager he was to talk to May Sutherland until Ivy began taking measures to forestall anything of the kind. Robin was both irritated and puzzled. But he had a nimble wit and a touch of diplomacy. He was willing to concede a point, to make a concession. “If I give her the go-by will you promise not to dance with Mark Steele?” “Why, how can I,” Ivy manifested surprise, “if he asks me?” “You can tell him you got another partner,” Robin suggested, “or say you’re tired. Any darned fool thing girls say when they don’t want to dance with a man.” “I can’t,” Ivy declared. “You mean you won’t. What’s the difference in you dancin’ with Shinin’ Mark when you know I’d rather you wouldn’t and me dancin’ with Miss Sutherland?” Robin kept his tone gentle although he had an impulse to shake soundly this morsel of perverse prettiness he held in his arms. He even managed to get a jocular note into what he said. “Lots of difference. I’ve often danced with Mark. You never kicked. You never said you didn’t want me to dance with him.” Robin was dumb. He couldn’t tell Ivy why. He couldn’t explain to her that he had never liked Mark Steele, nor why that dislike had suddenly become acute.