With his hand upon her bare arm he drew her closer.
"Ri-Ri—honest now—is this the first——?"
She drew away instinctively before the suppressed excitement of him. Her heart beat fast; her hands were very cold. She knew elation . . . and panic . . . and dread and hope.
It was for this she had come. Young and rich and free! What more would Mamma ask? What greater triumph could be hers?
"I'd like to make a lot of other things the first, too," muttered Johnny.
To Ri-Ri it seemed irrevocable things were being said. But she still held lightly away from him, resisting the clumsy pull of his arm. He hesitated—laughed oddly.
"It ought to be against the law for any girl to look the way you do, Ri-Ri." He laughed again. "I wonder if you know how the deuce you do look?"
"Perhaps it is the moonlight, Signor."
"Moonlight—you look as if you were made of it. . . . I could eat you up, Ri-Ri." His eyes on her red little mouth, on her white, beating throat. His voice had an odd, husky note.
"Don't be such a little frost, Ri-Ri. Don't you like me at all?"