acRae crept into his
tone.

"Oh, silly!"

There was a railing note of tenderness in Betty's voice. MacRae felt his
moorings slip. A heady recklessness of consequences seized him. He drew
her a little closer to him. Irresistible prompting from some wellspring
of his being urged him on to what his reason would have called sheer
folly, if that reason had not for the time suffered eclipse, which is a
weakness of rational processes when they come into conflict with a
genuine emotion.

"Do you like me, Betty?"

Her eyes danced. They answered as well as her lips:

"Of course I do. Haven't I been telling you so plainly enough? I've been
ashamed of myself for being so transparent--on such slight provocation."

"How much?" he demanded.

"Oh--well--"

The ballroom was suddenly shrouded in darkness, saved only from a
cavelike black by diffused street light through the upper windows. A
blown fuse. A mis-pulled switch. One of those minor accidents common to
electric lighting systems. The orchestra hesitated, went on. From a
momentary silence the dancers broke into chuckles, amused laughter, a
buzz of exclamatory conversation. But no one moved, lest they collide
with other unseen couples.

Jack and Betty stood still. They could not see. But MacRae could feel
the quick beat, of Betty's heart, the rise and fall of her breast, a
trembling in her fingers. There was a strange madness stirring in him.
His arm tightened about her. He felt that she yielded easily, as if
gladly. Their mouths sought and clung in the first real kiss Jack MacRae
had ever known. And then, as they relaxed that impulse-born embrace, the
lights flashed on again, blazed in a thousand globes in great frosted
clusters high against the gold-leaf decorations of the ceiling. The
dancers caught step again. MacRae and Betty circled the polished floor
silently. She floated in his arms like thistledown, her eyes like twin
stars, a deeper color in her cheeks.

Then the music ceased, and they were swept into a chattering group, out
of which presently materialized another partner to claim Betty. So they
parted with a smile and a nod.

But MacRae had no mind for dancing. He went out through the lobby and
straight to his room. He flung off his coat and sat down in a chair by
the window and blinked out into the night. He had looked, it seemed to
him, into the very gates of paradise,--and he could not go in.

It wasn't possible. He sat peering out over the dusky roofs