rough the barrage of hurtling couples. Polly
asked Davidge to retrieve her husband from the sloe-eyed ambassadress
who was hypnotizing him. She wailed to Mamise:

"I know I'm marked for life. I ought to have a wound-chevron for this.
I've got to go home and put my ankle in splints. I'll probably have to
wear it in a sling for a month. I'd like to kill the rotten hound that
put me out of business. And I had the next dance with that beautiful
Rumanian devil! You stay and dance with your ship-builder!"

Mamise could not even think of it, and insisted on bidding good night
to the crestfallen Davidge. He offered to ride out home with her, but
Polly refused. She wanted to have a good cry in the car.

Davidge bade Mamise good night, reminded her that she was plighted to
luncheon at twelve-thirty, and went to the house of the friend he was
stopping with, the hotels being booked solid for weeks ahead. He was
nursing a stern determination to endure bachelordom no longer.

Mamise was thinking of Davidge tenderly with one of her brains, while
another segment condoled with Polly. But most of her wits were engaged
in hunting a good excuse for her Baltimore escapade the next
afternoon, and in discarding such implausible excuses as occurred to
her.

Bitter chill it was, and these owls, for all their feathers, were
a-cold. Major Widdicombe was chattering.

"I danced myself into a sweat, and now my undershirt is all icicles. I
know I'll die of pneumonia."

He shifted his foot, and one of his spurs grazed the ankle of Polly,
who was snuggling to him for warmth.

She yowled: "My Gawd! My yankle! You'll not last long enough for
pneumonia if you touch me again."

He was filled with remorse, but when he tried to reach round to
embrace her, she would none of him.

When they got to the bridge, they were amazed at the lazy old Potomac.
It was a white torment of broken ice, roaring and slashing and
battering the piers of the ancient bridge ominously, huge sheets
clambering up and falling back split and broken, with the uproar of an
attack on a walled town.

The chauffeur went to full speed, and the frosty boards shrilled under
the flight.

The house was cold when they reached it, and Mamise's room was like a
storage-vault. She tore off her light dancing-dress and shivered as
she stripped and took refuge in a cobwebby nightgown. She threw on a
heavy bathrobe and kept it on when she crept into the icy interstice
between the all-too-