The Innocent Adventuress

by Mary Hastings Bradley

There had been distinct proprietorship in Johnny's reference to the dance, a hint of possessive admonition, a shade of anxiety to which Maria Angelina was not insensitive.

He wanted her to excel. His pride was calling, unconsciously, upon her, to justify his choice. The dance was an exhibition . . . competition. It was the open market . . . appraisal. . . .

No matter how charming she might be in the motor rides with the four, how pretty and piquant in the afternoon at the piano, how melodious in the evenings upon the steps, the full measure of his admiration was not exacted.

Sagely she surmised this. Anxiously she awaited the event.

It was her first real dance. It was her first American affair. Casually, in the evenings at the Lodge, they had danced to the phonograph and she had been initiated into new steps and amazed at the manner of them, but there had been nothing of the slightest formality.

Now the Martins were entertaining over the week-end, and giving a dance to which the neighborhood—meaning the neighborhood of the Martins' acquaintance—was assembling.

And again Maria Angelina felt the inrush of fear, the overwhelming timidity of inexperience held at bay by pride alone . . . again she knew the tormenting question which she had confronted in that dim old glass at the Palazzo Santonini on the day when she had heard of the adventure before her.

She asked it that night of a different glass, the big, built-in mirror of the dressing-room at the Martins given over to the ladies—a mirror that was a dissolving kaleidoscope of color and motion, of bright silks, bare shoulders and white arms, of pink cheeks, red lips and shining hair.

Advancing shyly among the young girls, filled with divided wonder at their self-possession and their extreme décolletage, Ri-Ri gazed at the glass timidly, determinedly, fatefully, as one approaches an oracle, and out from the glittering surface was flung back to her a radiant image of reassurance—a vision of a slim figure in filmiest white, slender arms and shoulders bare, dark hair not braided now, but piled high upon her head—a revelation of a nape of neck as young and kissable as a baby's and yet an addition of bewildering years to her immaturity.

To-night she was glad of the white skin, that was a gift from Mamma. The white coral string, against the satin softness of her throat, revealed its opalescent flush. She was immaculate, exquisite, like some figurine of fancy—an image of youth as sweet and innocently troubling as a May night.