"Y-e-s," quivered Daphne.
"Then come!" said the man.
Daphne did not stir.
Once again the vibrant fingers stroked along her pulsing wrist. "What you need," crooned the persuasive voice, "for what ails— you, is to whoop things up a bit, not whoop 'em down. Which statement," he grinned, "though it may not spell righteousness, remains at least the truth. So come!" he quickened. "And if you want to go wild, we'll go wild! And if you want to go tame, we'll go tame! Heaven or hell, I don't care—as long as it's together!"
From the glittering house-boat in the little bay a bell tolled out its resonant news that the hour was eight o'clock.
"Hurry up!" urged the man with the faintest possible rasp of anxiety in his voice. "For Heaven's sake if we're going let's go 166 while the going is good! No bungling! No fiasco! All I want from you," he turned and confided with sudden intensity, "is your promise that if we do start you'll see the thing through! My honor not to make a fool of you pledged against your honor not to make a fool of me! Girls are so unreliable."
"'Girls?'" winced Daphne.
From the glittering house-boat a woman's laugh rang out with curious congruity.
But when Daphne winced this time, she was in a lover's arms again, encompassed by a lover's tenderness, coaxed by a lover's voice.
"Oh, I don't pretend for a moment," crooned the persuasive voice, "that I've got just the crowd on board that I would have chosen for this particular sort of get-away. Nevertheless——" With a chuckle that would have been brutal if it had not been so exultant he bent down and brushed his lips across Daphne's throbbing temple. "Nevertheless," he chuckled, "of all the crowds that ever crowded anybody, this one represents perhaps the one most ready to eat from my hand. I haven't got much sense, it seems, nor yet a long life, but what I have got," he 167 laughed out suddenly, "I've got for fair! And that's money!" In a silence that was almost sinister he stood for an instant staring off at the house-boat's gay-lanterned outline against the dark fluttery palms. "Thought they'd yank me back from all this did they?" he questioned hotly. "Back to an old Board Meeting in a New York snow-storm? Not much! 'If you want your damned old library,' I wired 'em, 'come ahead down here and thrash it out where a fellow can argue without frost biting his tongue, and be catching a tarpon or two on the side at the same time.' Wired 'em tickets and everything, the whole damned outfit, architect and all! Heap-sight easier though than going back to New York! But if I don't want to give 'em the library," he grinned with sudden malice, "I don't have to, you know—even now! There's nothing in my father's will, I mean, that compels me to give it. My father's will merely suggests that I give it, advises me to give it, 'with such subsequent moneys,' he quoted mockingly, 'as may comprise my estate' at the time I cash in. But of all the big stiffs," he shuddered, "that I ever saw, 168 Claudia Merriwayne leads them all, not even excepting her new Dean or her Oldest Trustee!"