“I know the signs, dear man,” the cat seemed to purr, but she had claws.
And it was Adelaide who was right. Edith had come to the knowledge that night of what Baldy meant to her.
As she had entered the ballroom men had crowded around her. “Why,” they demanded, “do you wear mistletoe, if you don’t want to pay the forfeit?”
Backed up against one of the marble pillars, she held them off. “I do want to pay it, but not to any of you.”
Her frankness diverted them. “Who is the lucky man?”
“He is here. But he doesn’t know he is lucky.”
They thought she was joking. But she was not. And on the other side of the marble pillar a page in scarlet listened, with joy and fear in his heart. “How fast we are going. How fast.”
There was dancing until midnight, then the curtains at the end of the room were drawn back, and the tree was revealed. It towered to the ceiling, a glittering, gorgeous thing. It was weighted with gifts for everybody, fantastic toys most of them, expensive, meaningless.
Evans, standing back of the crowd, was aware of the emptiness of it all. Oh, what had there been throughout the evening to make men think of the Babe who had been born at Bethlehem?
The gifts of the Wise Men? Perhaps. Gold and frankincense and myrrh? One must not judge too narrowly. It was hard to keep simplicities in these opulent days.