And Eileen slapped him smartly across the mouth. She started to bolt for the door, but he dragged her back, clinging to her struggling hand. "You—one of that band!" she cried.
"Oh, let me apologize," he laughed, rubbing the red mark about his mouth with his free hand. "If your hero resents my robbing him of one stingy, little kiss—— Band? What band?" But there was no question in his eyes.
"Stop him!" cried Eileen shrilly. "Oh, please, somebody call him back!"
A sophomore, always willing to aid a lady in distress, sprang to the chase, and Eileen, breaking loose, stumbled after him out upon the dance floor. A waltz was under way, and the floor was jammed.
They tried to break through, but were thrust aside by laughing dancers, who seemed to take this to be a new and diverting game.
They tried again, and now Professor Hodgson, smiling blandly, came upon the scene and interposed further interference. Dodging past him and narrowly avoiding collision with a whirling couple close to the wall, Eileen scurried down the side in the direction of the cloakroom, with big, hot tears burning down her flushed cheeks.
When she reached the cloak-room she searched it in anxious haste for the Marconi cap, the light-blue overcoat. Both were missing.
With the sophomore atow, and conscious of the romantic nature of his errand, she ran into the moonlit street, looking up and down the black-shadowed sidewalk for signs of the straight, tall figure.
Down the street, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant, she made out the motionless streamer of lights of a train, the San Francisco train.
With her gray Quaker dress flapping, and the clutter of white petticoats hindering the rhythm of her knees and ankles, Eileen sped down the middle of the road with the excited sophomore bringing up a mad rear.