just stood there and looked up at him.
Her jaws kept on moving slightly. There was in her eyes the minimum of
human intelligence and the maximum of unconscious animal invitation--a
blank, defenseless expression of--"Here I am. Take me." As Jim Greely
expressed the look: "Girlie makes everything easy. She don't give a
fellow any discomfort like some of these skittish girls do. She's kind of
home folks at once."

"We can't get into the quadrille now," said Jim, "but you'll give me the
next, won't you, Girlie?"

"Sure, Jim," said the unsmiling, rosy mouth.

Jim moved uneasily on his patent-leather feet. He shot a sidelong glance
at Sheila.

"Say, Miss Arundel, may I have the next after ... Meet Mr. Gates," he
added spasmodically, as the hand of a gigantic friend crushed his elbow.

Sheila looked up a yard or two of youth and accepted Mr. Gates's
invitation for "the next."

The head at the top of the tower bent itself down to her with a
snakelike motion.

"Us fellows," it said, "have been aiming to give you a good time
to-night."

Sheila was relieved to find him within hearing. Her smile dawned
enchantingly. It had all the inevitability of some sweet natural event.

"That's very good of--you fellows. I didn't know you knew that there was
such a person as--as me in Millings."

"You bet you, we knew. Here goes the waltz. Do you want to Castle it? I
worked in a Yellowstone Park Hotel last summer, and I'm wise on dancing."

Sheila found herself stretched ceilingwards. She must hold one arm
straight in the air, one elbow as high as she could make it go, and she
must dance on her very tip-toes. Like every girl whose life has taken her
in and out of Continental hotels, she could dance, and she had the gift
of intuitive rhythm and of yielding to her partner's intentions almost
before they were muscularly expressed. Mr. Gates felt that he was dancing
with moonlight, only the figure of speech is not his own.

Girlie in the arms of Jim spoke to him above her rigid chin. Girlie had
the haughty manner of dancing.

"She's not much of a looker, is she, Jim?" But the pain in her heart gave
the speech an audible edge.

"She's not much of anything," said Jim, who had not looked like the
young man on the magazine cover for several busy years in vain. "She's
just a scrap."

But Girlie could not be deceived. Sheila's delicate, crystalline beauty
pierced her senses like the frosty beauty of a winter star: her dress of
white