her remark
teasingly, though she did want to know, "that a certain mysterious
gentleman who masquerades as a horse-breaker is very much interested in
Judith."

"What makes you say a thing like that?" he asked, startled a little.

Marcia laughed.

"A woman's intuition, Sir Mystery!" she informed him gayly.

"What does the woman's intuition find to be the mysterious gentleman's
interest in a certain Miss Langworthy?" he asked lightly.

"It tells her that he likes her; that it would be fun for him to come
and play with her; that he would be kind and courteous; but that he
considers her very much as he would a foolish little butterfly!"

Again she startled him. He looked at her wonderingly. But before he
could frame a bantering reply, Marcia had involuntarily gripped at his
arm with a look upon her face that first was sheer bewildered
astonishment, and was crying for him to look yonder.

Judith had come.

Across the floor, now nearly deserted, Bud Lee and Marcia stared at
her. She was coming toward them, her dainty little slippers seeming to
kiss their own reflections in the gleaming floor. It was Judith and
not Judith. It was some strange, unknown Judith. A wonderfully
gowned, transcendently lovely Judith. A Judith who had long hidden
herself, masquerading, and who now stepped forth smiling and bright and
vividly beautiful; a Judith of bare white arms, round and soft and rich
in their tender curves; a Judith whose filmy gown floated about her
like a sun-shot mist; a Judith whose skin above the low-cut corsage was
like a baby's, whose tender mouth was a red flower, whose hair was a
shimmering mass of bronze-brown, whose eyes were Aphrodite's own,
glorious, dawn-gray; a Judith of rare maidenly charm; a glorious,
palpitant, triumphant Judith.

It might have been just because it was fitting that they should greet
their hostess so; it might have been because the men and women who saw
this new Judith were caught suddenly in a compelling current of
admiration, that above the hum of voices rose from everywhere a quick
clapping of hands as she came through the room. The color of her
cheeks deepened, her eyes flashed a joyous acknowledgment of the
greeting, and bright and cool and self-possessed she came on to Marcia.

"Marcia, dear," she said, taking Marcia's two hands--and Bud Lee found
that even Judith's voice had taken on a new note, deeper, richer,
gladder, fraught with the quality of low music--"forgive me