e string of pearls he had
given her a month in advance of her birthday. She said it would be her
twenty-third, and Max had been incredulous in the nicest way. He would
have supposed her to be nineteen at the most, if she had not been so
frank.

"Now, if you've looked at the ring enough _off_ your finger, will you
let me put it on?" he begged. "I'll make a wish--a good wish: that you
shall never grow tired of your bargain. For it _is_ a bargain, isn't it?
From the minute this ring is on your finger you're engaged to me."

"What will your beautiful mother say?" asked Billie, hanging back
daintily, and doing charming things with her eyelashes.

"Oh, she'll be surprised at first," Max had to admit. "You see, she's so
young herself and such a great beauty, it must be hard for her to
realize she's got a son who has grown up to be a man. I used to think
she was the most exquisite creature on earth, but now----"

His words broke off, and he looked up from the gleaming line of
gold-and-black lashes. An orderly had come quickly and almost
noiselessly to him. "For you, Lieutenant," the man announced with a
salute, holding out a telegram.

"May I?" murmured Doran, and perfunctorily opened the envelope.

Billie went on gazing at the ring. She was faintly annoyed at the delay,
for she was anxious to see how the blue diamond would look on her
finger, and Max had asked to wish it on. The lights in the stone were so
fascinating, however, that for an instant she forgot the interruption.
Then, sensitive to all that was dramatic, something in the quality of
Max Doran's silence struck her. She felt suddenly surrounded by a
chilling atmosphere which seemed to shut her and Max away from the
dancers, away from music and life, as if a thick glass case had been let
down over them both. She glanced up quickly. No wonder she had felt so
cold. Doran's face looked frozen. His eyes were still fixed on the
telegram, though there had been time for him to read it over and over
again. He was so lost in the news it had brought that he had forgotten
even her--forgotten her in the moment when she had been consenting to a
formal engagement, she, the illusive, the vainly desired one, run after
just to the foot of her unclimbable mountain by the nimblest, the
richest, everywhere!

Her small soul was stirred to resentment. She wanted to punish Max Doran
for daring to neglect her at such a time, even for a few seconds; but a
half-angry, half-frightened s