"We'll bring him around, between us. You talk to him after I go, and the next time I see him I'll clinch matters. You'll make the most gorgeous of queens, Myra Nell."
"You think so?" She blushed prettily in the gloom. "I'll have to be very dignified; the train is as long as a hall carpet and I'll have to walk this way." She illustrated the royal step, bowing to him with a regal inclination of her dark head, and then broke out into rippling life and laughter so infectious that he felt he was a boy once more.
The girl's unaffected spontaneity was her most adorable trait. She was like a dancing ray of sunshine, and underneath her blithesome carelessness was a fine, clean, tender nature. Blake watched her with his eyes alight, for all men loved Myra Nell Warren and it was conceded among those who worshiped at her shrine that he who finally received her love in return for his would be favored far above his kind. She was closer to him to-night than ever before; she seemed to reach out and take him into her warm confidence, while he felt her appeal more strongly than at any time in their acquaintance. Of course she did not let him do much talking, she never did that, and now her head was full of dreams, of delirious anticipations, of splendid visions.
At last, when she had thanked him in as many ways as she could think of for his kindness and the time drew near for him to leave, she fell serious in a most abrupt manner, and then to his great surprise referred once again to his affair with the Mafia.
"It seems to me that my joy would be supreme to-night if I knew you would drop that Italian matter," she said. "The consequences may be terrible and—I—don't want you to get into trouble."
"I'll be careful," he told her, but as she stood with her hand in his she looked up at him with eyes which were no longer sparkling with fun, but deep and dark with shadows, saying, gently:
"Is there nothing which would induce you to change your mind?"
"That's not a fair question."
"I shall be worried to death—and I detest worry."
"There's no necessity for the least bit of concern," he assured her. But there was a plaintive wrinkle upon her brow as she watched him swing down the walk to the street.