now? And why does one hurt you? Why not two? Who will bet
that it won't stop hurting after this dance?" they inquired of one
another, "and who is the man it is hurting for?"

Gay surveyed them dispassionately with her misty, violet eyes.

"Don't be silly," said she serenely; "my shoe hurts."

They gave her up as hopeless and faded away, one by one, bent on
finding someone to finish the waltz with. Men out-numbered girls by
about four to one in Wankelo. Only Tryon stayed, lounging against the
wall, smiling subtly to himself.

"There's Molly Tring just coming in," said Gay to him. "You'd better
go and get a dance from her, Dick."

"By and by," said Tryon, with his cryptic smile. "I'm waiting for
something."

Even as he spoke, Gay saw across the room the face she had been
watching for. A tall man had come into the doorway and stood casting a
casual but comprehensive eye about him. He was not in evening dress,
but wore a loose grey lounge suit of rather careless aspect, and his
short, fairish, curly hair was ruffled as though he had been running
his fingers through it. Accompanying him was a small black dog with a
large stone in its mouth, which came into the ballroom and sat down.
Gay gave one look at the pair of them, and the colour went out of her
face. There was more than a glint of passion in the eyes she turned to
Tyron, who was smiling no longer.

"I'll finish this dance with you, if you like, Dick."

"My shoe hurts," said Tryon.

She flung away from him in a rage and a moment later, was lost among
the rest of the dancers in the arms of one Claude Hayes, a man not too
proud to take the goods the gods offered, even if they were short
ratio. Tryon sauntered over to the doorway tenanted by the man in
grey, who appeared to be delightfully impervious to the fact that he
was the only person on the scene not in evening dress.

"Hello, Tryon!" said he.

"Hello, Lundi! Thought you meant to turn up and dance tonight?"

"Yes, so I did," said Lundi Druro, looking at Tryon with the blithe and
friendly smile that made all men like him. "But I forgot."

"I won't ask what you were doing, then," was Tryon's dry comment. To
which Druro responded nothing. He was one of those who did before the
sun and moon that which seemed good unto him to do, with a sublime
indifference to comments. Everyone knew what he was doing when he
"forgot," and he didn't care if they did.

"Lundi meant to get married, but he