Alan Massey was unused to putting away temptation but this, perhaps the biggest and blackest that had ever assailed him he put by.
"No, dear I'll go alone," he said. "You will just have to trust me, Tony. I swear I'll do everything in the world that can be done for Carson. Let us have just one dance though. I should like it to remember—in Mexico."
Tony hesitated. It was very late. The Hostelry would ill approve of her going anywhere to dance at such an hour. It ill approved of Alan Massey any way. Still—
"I am going to-morrow. It is our last chance," he pleaded. "Just one dance, carissima. It may have to last—a long, long time."
And Tony yielded. After all they could not treat this night as if it were like all the other nights in the calendar. They had the right to their one more hour of happiness before Alan went away. They had the right to this one last dance.
The one dance turned into many before they were through. It seemed to both as if they dared not stop lest somehow love and happiness should stop too with the end of the music. They danced on and on "divinely" as Alan had once called it. Tony thought the rest of his prophecy was fulfilled at last, that they also loved each other divinely, as no man or woman had ever loved since time began.
But at last this too had to come to an end as perfect moments must in this finite world and Alan and Tony went out of the brilliantly lighted restaurant into white whirls of snow. For a storm had started while they had been inside and was now well in progress. All too soon the cab deposited them at the Hostelry. In the dimly lit hall Alan drew the girl into his arms and kissed her passionately then suddenly almost flung her from him, muttered a curt good-by and before Tony hardly realized he was going, was gone, swallowed up in the night and storm. Alone Tony put her hands over her hot cheeks. So this was love. It was terrible, but oh—it was wonderful too.
Soberly after a moment she went to change the damning OUT opposite her name in the hall bulletin just as the clock struck the shocking hour of three. But lo there was no damning OUT visible, only a meek and proper IN after her name. For all the bulletin proclaimed Antoinette Holiday might have been for hours wrapt in innocent slumber instead of speeding away the wee' sma' hours in a public restaurant in the arms of a lover at whom Madame Grundy and her allies looked awry. Somebody had tampered with the thing to save Tony a reprimand or worse. But who? Jean? No, certainly not Jean. Jean's conscience was as inelastic as a yard stick. Whoever had committed the charitable act of mendacity it couldn't have been Jean.
But when Tony opened her own door and switched on the light there was Jean curled up asleep in the big arm chair. The sudden flare of light roused the sleeper and she sat up blinking.
"Wherever have you been, Tony? I have been worried to death about you. I've been home from the theater for hours. I couldn't think what had happened to you."