his arm a little, but the strength of the man was like an all-
pervading fluid, stealing through her veins, awakening under her
heart some nameless, unsuspected existence that had slumbered there
all these years and that went out through her throbbing fingertips
to his that answered. She wondered if the hoydenish blood of some
lawless ancestor, long asleep, were calling out in her tonight,
some drop of a hotter fluid that the centuries had failed to cool,
and why, if this curse were in her, it had not spoken before. But
was it a curse, this awakening, this wealth before undiscovered,
this music set free? For the first time in her life her heart held
something stronger than herself, was not this worthwhile? Then she
ceased to wonder. She lost sight of the lights and the faces and
the music was drowned by the beating of her own arteries. She saw
only the blue eyes that flashed above her, felt only the
warmth of that throbbing hand which held hers and which the blood
of his heart fed. Dimly, as in a dream, she saw the drooping
shoulders, high white forehead and tight, cynical mouth of the man
she was to marry in December. For an hour she had been crowding
back the memory of that face with all her strength.

"Let us stop, this is enough," she whispered. His only answer
was to tighten the arm behind her. She sighed and let that
masterful strength bear her where it would. She forgot that this
man was little more than a savage, that they would part at dawn.
The blood has no memories, no reflections, no regrets for the past,
no consideration of the future.

"Let us go out where it is cooler," she said when the music
stopped; thinking, I am growing faint here, I shall be all
right in the open air. They stepped out into the cool, blue