ashioning a miniature sand
mountain as she spoke.

"No nonsense at all, my dear. Perfectly obvious fact. Don't you suppose I
know how a man looks when he is in love? I ought to. I've been in love
often enough."

Tony demolished her mountain with a wrathful sweep of her hand.

"And registered all the appropriate emotions before the mirror, I
suppose. You make me sick, Alan. You are all pose. I don't believe there
is a single sincere thing about you."

"Oh, yes, there is--are--two."

"What are they?"

"One is my sincere devotion to yourself, my beautiful. The other--an
equally sincere devotion to--_myself_."

"I grant you the second, at least."

"Don't pose, yourself, my darling. You know I love you. You pretend you
don't believe it, but you do. And way down deep in your heart you love my
love. It makes your heart beat fast just to think of it. See! Did I not
tell you?" He had suddenly put out his hand and laid it over her heart.

"Poor little wild bird! How its wings flutter!"

Tony got up swiftly from the sand, her face scarlet. She was indignant,
self-conscious, betrayed. For her heart had been beating at a fearful
clip and she knew it.

"How dare you touch me like that, Alan Massey? I detest you. I don't see
why I ever listen to you at all, or let you come near me."

Alan Massey, still lounging at her feet, looked up at her as she stood
above him, slim, supple, softly rounded, adorably pretty and feminine in
her black satin bathing suit and vivid, emerald hued cap.

"I know why," he said and rose, too, slowly, with the indolent grace of a
leopard. "So do you, my Tony," he added. "We both know. Will you dance
with me a great deal to-night?"

"No."

"How many times?"

"Not at all."

"Indeed! And does his Dick Highmightiness object to your dancing with
me?"

"Dick! Of course not. He hasn't anything to do with it. I am not going to
dance with you because you are behaving abominably to-day, and you did
yesterday and the day before that. I think you are nearly always
abominable, in fact."

"Still, I am one of the best dancers in the world. It is a temptation, is
it not, my own?"

He smiled his slow, tantalizing smile and, in spite of herself, Tony
smiled back.

"It is," she admitted. "You are a heavenly dancer, Alan. There is no
denying it. If you were Mephisto himself I think I would dance with
you--occasionally."

"And to-night?"

"Once," relented Tony. "There come the others at last." And