There was no sound of voices in the outer passageway to herald Sheridan Kaire's return: just a little stumble on the edge of a rug—an unwonted fumble with the door handle. It wasn't defiance that backed him up now against the support of the wainscoating, but a very faint uncertainty in his legs. There was nothing uncertain, however, about his face. Geniality, not to say, 217 jocularity, wreathed it from ear to ear and from brow to chin.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting so long, dear—dear people," he beamed. "But a Host has so many responsibilities . . . . Overseeing the pantries and the—the libraries and the ladies!" he beamed. "Why—why, I can't help my way with the ladies!" he turned and explained with half-mocking anxiety to Jaffrey Bretton's absolutely inscrutable face. "Always, ever since I was a little boy," he deprecated, "I've been the Village cut-up! So was my father before me, and his father before—before me. Too bad, isn't it?" he questioned sharply. "Such a nice family! And so lively!" At an unexpected glimpse of his face in the mirror he turned back to meet Daphne's staring face. "Now this scar of mine, darling—darling," he confided dramatically, "you want to know where I got it? All the ladies always want to know where I got it! Just as soon as a lady gets up her courage to ask me about it," he chuckled, "then I always know she's really beginning to think of me! You asked if I got it in a 'brave 218 war,'" he chuckled. "Sure I got it in a brave war. Only the brave—deserve affairs," he parodied lightly. "It was in Smyrna," he confided, "when I was eighteen. I—I made a little poem about it:
"'There was a young Princess of Smyrna,
Of love I endeavored to learn her,
But her father in hate cleft a seam through my pate,
Now wasn't that the deuce of a turn-a?'"
Precipitately and without the slightest warning he plunged down into a chair and began to whimper maudlinly while with one uncertain finger tip he traced and retraced the twitching, zig- zagged scar. "It—it isn't nice, is it?" he babbled idiotically. "And I was such a pretty boy? . . . Ladies shouldn't ask such questions," he babbled. "Not just as you're going to kiss 'em. It—it makes dead faces floating between! It—isn't nice! Oh, Daphne darling—darling——"
But with a little scream of release Daphne's hand was already on the door knob.
"Oh, come quick, Old-Dad!" she cried. "It's all over! It's all canceled! He's broken his promise! He's——"