it
a kiss.

A footman, sullen for want of sleep, opened the door of the limousine.
Some one was sitting in the corner with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Marty! Is that you?"

"It's all right," said Gilbert Palgrave. "I've been playing patience
for half an hour. I'm going to see you home."

V

"You are going home?"

"Yes," said Joan, "without the shadow of a doubt."

"Which means that I'd better tell the chauffeur to drive round to the
One-o'clock, eh?"

"I'll drop you there if you like. I'm really truly going home."

"All right."

Joan began to sing as the car bowled up Fifth Avenue. Movement always
made her sing, and the effect of things slipping behind her. But she
stopped suddenly as an expression of Alice's flicked across her memory.
"You'll catch Alice up, if you go straight back," she said.

"Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire! I wonder why it is the really good woman is
never appreciated by a man until he's obliged to sit on the other side
of the fireplace? I wish we were driving away out into the country. I
have an unusual hankering to stand on the bank of a huge lake and watch
the moonlight on the water."

Joan was singing again. The trees in the Park were bespattered with
young leaves.

Palgrave controlled an ardent desire to touch with his lips that cool
white shoulder from which the cloak had slipped. It was extraordinary
how this mere girl inflamed him. Alice--Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire! She
seemed oddly like some other man's wife, these days.

"Suppose I tell your man to drive out of the city beyond this rabble of
bricks and mortar?"

But Joan went on singing. Spring was in her blood. How fast the car was
moving, and those young clouds.

Palgrave helped her out with a hot hand.

She opened the door with her latch-key. "Thank you, Gilbert," she said.
"Good night."

But Palgrave followed her in. "Don't you think I've earned the right to
one cigarette?" He threw his coat into a chair in the hall and hung his
hat on the longest point of an antler. It was a new thing for this much
flattered man to ask for favors. This young thing's exultant youth made
him feel old and rather humble.

"There are sandwiches in the dining room and various things to drink,"
said Joan, waving her hand toward it.

"No, no. Let's go up to the drawing-room--that is, unless you--"

But Joan was already on the stairs, with the chorus of her song. She
didn't feel in the least like sleep with its escape from life. I