"Claudia—Merriwayne?" gasped Daphne.
"Oh, of course, in my day," persisted Kaire, "I have had grace at my table, and some disgrace now and then! But Greek? And Latin? and Doric columns? And the 'influence of concrete on young character?' Why where are you?" he turned and called suddenly through the darkness. Gropingly his arms reached out and snatched her to him again, and for the first time she yielded limply, and lay like a bruised rose against his breast. "Why, I can't even hear you breathing!" he cried. "Why, you might be dead, you are so still! And your little hands are like ice! And——"
"Did—you—say—that—that Miss Claudia Merriwayne—was on that boat out there—with you?" faltered Daphne.
"Why, yes," shrugged the man, "I think that's the lady's name. Why—why, shouldn't she be there? All the colleges are closed now, aren't they, for the Christmas holidays? Why, surely you 169 don't mean that you care?" he laughed. "That you don't like my having the dame?"
"Care?" hooted Daphne. Like a wraith suddenly electrified all the fire, the nerve, the sparkle, the recklessness came surging back to her!
Through every quiver of his overwrought nerves he sensed the strange almost psychic change come over her, a brighter gold to the hair, a deeper blue to the eyes, a quicker pulse in the slender throat. Every tender line of her thrown suddenly into italics, every minor chord crashing into crescendo! If she had been beautiful in the rompish escapade of the beach, and the single wistful silence of the moment before, her beauty was absolutely maddening to him now.
With a little quick cry that was almost like a challenge she reached up and touched him on the shoulder. It was her first caress.
"Oh, all right! I'll go with you!" she cried excitedly. "But on one condition only!"
"A hundred conditions!" quickened the man, "so long as you make them before we start!"
"It's about our 'start' that I'm making this one!" cried Daphne. 170 Her flesh was flaming with blushes but neither her heart nor her mind knew just why she blushed. "It's—it's about your drunkenness!" she flamed. "After we're man and wife, with my faults as well as yours, we'll have to do the best we can, think it out, fight it out, maybe we can get somebody to help us! But until we're man and wife, I must not be embarrassed—or humiliated! Badness that knows that it's badness, that's one thing! But silliness that doesn't know it's silliness, I just couldn't stand it, that's all!" Shrewdly her young eyes narrowed to his. "You're—you're quite right what you said on the beach just now! No one can guarantee his ending! But it's an awful goose, Sheridan Kaire, who doesn't guarantee his start! So if I pledge you, Sheridan Kaire," flamed the proud little face, "that once started I will see the whole thing through, it is pledged on the understanding that you will protect the—the dignity of that start?"