"--and that Miss Von Eaton," chuckled one man to another. "Lordy!
There'll be more than forty men after her for to-morrow night! Smith!
Arnold! Hudson! Hazeltine! Who are you betting will get her?"

"I'M BETTING THAT I WILL!" crashed every brutally
competitive male instinct in Barton's body. Impetuously he broke
away from the Edgartons and darted off to find Miss Von Eaton before
"Smith--Arnold--Hudson--Hazeltine"--or any other man should find
her!

So he sent little Eve Edgarton a great, gorgeous box of candy instead,
wonderful candy, pounds and pounds of it, fine, fluted chocolates, and
rose-pink bonbons, and fat, sugared violets, and all sorts of
tin-foiled mysteries of fruit and spice.

And when the night of the party came he strutted triumphantly to it
with Helene Von Eaton, who already at twenty was beginning to be just
a little bit bored with parties; and together through all that riot of
music and flowers and rainbow colors and dazzling lights they trotted
and tangoed with monotonous perfection--the envied and admired of all
beholders; two superbly physical young specimens of manhood and
womanhood, desperately condoning each other's dullnesses for the sake
of each other's good looks.

And while Youth and its Laughter--a chaos of color and shrill
crescendos--was surging back and forth across the flower-wreathed
piazzas, and violins were wheedling, and Japanese lanterns drunk with
candle light were bobbing gaily in the balsam-scented breeze, little
Eve Edgarton, up-stairs in her own room, was kneeling crampishly on
the floor by the open window, with her chin on the window-sill,