le. His own eyes studied Sylvia. Her face held too much
colour. She gave him back his challenge, but the contempt in her eyes
broadened his smile. He managed a reassuring nod to Goodhue, but
Dalrymple, for the time, was of no importance. Sylvia was going to
fight, and not like a spoiled child. He must have impressed her as being
worthy of a real fight.

He faced the rest of the evening with new confidence. He forgot to be
over-careful with these people whose actions were unstudied. He dodged
across the floor and took Betty from Lambert Planter while Lambert
raised his eyebrows, relinquished her with pronounced reluctance, and
watched George guide her swiftly away. Maybe Lambert was right, and he
ought to tell Betty, but not now. To-night, against all his
expectations, he found himself having a good time, enjoying more than
anything else this intimate and exhilarating progress with Betty. Always
he hated to give her up, but he danced with other girls, and found they
liked to dance with him because he was big, and danced well, and was
Dicky Goodhue's friend and Betty's, and played football; but, since he
couldn't very well ask Sylvia, he only really cared to dance with Betty.

He was at Betty's table for supper. He didn't like to hear these pretty
girls laughing about Dalrymple, but then with them Dalrymple must have
exercised a good deal of restraint. It ought to be possible to make them
see the ugly side, to bare the man's instinct to go from this party to
another. Then they wouldn't laugh.

Lambert sat down for awhile.

"Where's Sylvia?" Betty asked.

Lambert shrugged his shoulders.

"It's hard enough to keep track of you, Betty. Sylvia's a sister."

George gathered that Sylvia's absence from that table had impressed them
both. He knew very well where she was, across the room, focus for as
large a gathering as Betty's, chiefly of young men, eager for her
brilliancy. Lambert went on, glancing at George his questions of the
smoking-room.

It wasn't long before the dawn when George said polite things with
Goodhue and Wandel, and after their pattern. In the lower hall he
noticed that all these pleasure seekers, a while ago flushed and happy,
had undergone a devastating change. Faces were white. Gowns looked
rumpled and old. The laughter and chatter were no longer impulsive.

"The way one feels after a hard game," he thought.

Goodhue offered to take Wandel in and drop him. The little man alone
seemed as fresh a