The Danger Mark

"Not—seriously," she said.... "And, Duane, please don't be too serious with me. I am—you make me uncertain—you make me uncomfortable. I don't know just what to say to you or just how it will be taken. You mustn't be—that way—with me; you won't, will you?"

He was silent for a moment; then his face lighted up. "No," he said, laughing; "I'll open another can of platitudes.... You're a dear to forgive me."

Dancing had been general before the cotillion; débutantes continued to arrive in shoals from other dinners, a gay, rosy, eager throng, filling drawing-rooms, conservatory, and library with birdlike flutter and chatter, overflowing into the breakfast-room, banked up on the stairs in bright-eyed battalions.

The cotillion, led by Jack Dysart dancing alone, was one of those carefully thought out intellectual affairs which shakes New York society to its intellectual foundations.

In one figure Geraldine came whizzing into the room in a Palm Beach tricycle-chair trimmed with orchids and propelled by Peter Tappan; and from her seat amid the flowers she distributed favours—live white cockatoos, clinging, flapping, screeching on gilded wands; fans spangled with tiny electric jewels; parasols of pink silk set with incandescent lights; crystal cages containing great, pale-green Luna moths alive and fluttering; circus hoops of gilt filled with white tissue paper, through which the men jumped.

There was also a Totem-pole figure—and other things, including supper and champagne, and the semi-obscurity of conservatory and stairs; and there was the usual laughter to cover heart-aches, and the inevitable torn gowns and crushed flowers; and a number of young men talking too loud and too much in the cloak-room, and Rosalie Dysart admitting to Scott Seagrave in the conservatory that nobody really understood her; and Delancy Grandcourt edging about the outer borders of the flowery, perfumed vortex, following Geraldine and losing her a hundred times.

On one of these occasions she was captured by Duane Mallett and convoyed to the supper-room, where later she became utterly transfigured into a laughing, blushing, sparkling, delicious creature, small ears singing with her first venturesome glass of champagne.

All the world seemed laughing with her; life itself was only an endless bubble of laughter, swelling the gay, unending chorus; life was the hot breeze from scented fans stirring a thousand roses; life was the silken throng and its whirling and its feverish voices crying out to her to live!

Her childhood's playmate had come back a stranger, but already he was being transformed, through the magic of laughter, into the boy she remembered; awkwardness of readjusting her relations with him had entirely vanished; she called him dear Duane, laughed at him, chatted with him, appealed, contradicted, rebuked, tyrannised, until the young fellow was clean swept off his feet.

Then Dysart came, and for the second time the note of coquetry was struck, clearly, unmistakably, through the tension of a moment's preliminary silence; and Duane, dumb, furious, yielded her only when she took Dysart's arm with a finality that became almost insolent as she turned and looked back at her childhood's comrade, who followed, scowling at Dysart's graceful back.

Confused by his hurt and his anger, which seemed out of all logical proportion to the cause of it, he turned abruptly and collided with Grandcourt, who had edged up that far, waiting for the opportunity of which Dysart, as usual, robbed him.

Grandcourt apologised, muttering something about Mrs. Severn wishing him to find Miss Seagrave. He stood, awkwardly, looking after Geraldine and Dysart, but not offering to follow them.

"Lot of débutantes here—the whole year's output," he said vaguely. "What a noisy supper-room—eh, Mallett? I'm rather afraid champagne is responsible for some of it."

Duane started forward, halted.

"Did you say Mrs. Severn wants Miss Seagrave?"

"Y—yes.... I'd better go and tell her, hadn't I?"

He flushed heavily, but made no movement to follow Geraldine and Dysart, who had now entered the conservatory and disappeared.

For a full minute, uncomfortably silent, the two men stood side by side; then Duane said in a constrained voice:

"I'll speak to Miss Seagrave, if you'll find her brother and Mrs. Severn"; and walked slowly toward the palm-set rotunda.

When he found them—and he found them easily, for Geraldine's overexcited laughter warned and guided him—Dysart, her fan in his hands, looked up at Duane intensely annoyed, and the young girl tossed away a half-destroyed rose and glanced up, the laughter dying out from lips and eyes.

"Kathleen sent for you," said Duane drily.

"I'll come in a minute, Duane."

"In a moment," repeated Dysart insolently, and turned his back.

The colour surged into Mallett's face; he turned sharply on his heel.

"Wait!" said Geraldine; "Duane—do you hear me?"

"I'll take you back," began Dysart, but she passed in front of him and laid her hand on Mallett's arm.

"Won't you wait for me, Duane?"

And suddenly things seemed to be as they had been in their childhood, the resurgence swept them both back to the old and stormy footing again.

"Duane!"

"What?"

"I tell you to wait for me—here!" She stamped her foot.

He scowled—but waited. She turned on Dysart:

"Good-night!"—offering her hand with decision.

Dysart began: "But I had expected–"

"Good-night!"

Dysart stared, took the offered hand, hesitated, started to speak, thought better of it, made a characteristically graceful obeisance, and an excellent exit, all things considered.

Geraldine drew a deep breath, moved forward through the flower-set dimness a step or two, halted, and, as Mallett came up, passed her arm through his.

"Duane," she said, "the champagne has gone to my head."

"Nonsense!"

"It has! My cheeks are queer—the skin fits too tight. My legs don't belong to me—but they'll do."

She laughed and turned toward him; her feverish breath touched his cheek.

"My first dinner! Isn't it disgraceful? But how could I know?"

"You mustn't let it scare you."

"It doesn't. I don't care. I knew something would go wrong. I—the truth is, that I don't know how to act—how to accept my liberty. I don't know how to use it. I'm a perfect fool.... Do you think Kathleen will notice this? Isn't it terrible! She never dreamed I would touch any wine. Do I look—queer?"

"No. It isn't so, anyway—and you'll simply lean on me–"

"Oh, my knees are perfectly steady. It's only that they don't seem to belong to me. I'm—I'm excited—I've laughed too much—more than I have ever laughed in all the years of my life put together. You don't know what I mean, do you, Duane? But it's true; I've talked to-night more than I ever have in any one week.... And it's gone to my head—all this—all these people who laugh with me over nothing—follow me, tell me I am pretty, ask me for dances, favours, beg me for a word with them—as though I would need asking or urging!—as though my impulse is not to open my heart to every one of them—open my arms to them—thank them on my knees for being here—for being nice to me—all these boys who make little circles around me—so funny, so quaint in their formality–"

She pressed his arm tighter.

"Let me rattle on—let me babble, Duane. I've years of silence to make up for. Let me talk like a fool; you know I'm not one.... Oh, the happiness of this one night!—the happiness of it! I never shall have enough dancing, never enough of pleasure.... I—I'm perfectly mad over pleasure; I like men.... I suppose the champagne makes me frank about it—but I don't care—I do like men–"

"That one?" demanded Mallett, halting her on the edge of the palms which screened the conservatory doors.

"You mean Mr. Dysart? Yes—I—do like him."