"Moonlight is bright,
Kiss me good night."


What a wonderful song, she thought--everything was wonderful to-night,
most of all this romantic scene in the den, with their hands clinging and
the inevitable looming charmingly close. The future vista of her life
seemed an unending succession of scenes like this: under moonlight and
pale starlight, and in the backs of warm limousines and in low, cosy
roadsters stopped under sheltering trees--only the boy might change,
and this one was so nice. He took her hand softly. With a sudden
movement he turned it and, holding it to his lips, kissed the palm.

"Isabelle!" His whisper blended in the music, and they seemed to float
nearer together. Her breath came faster. "Can't I kiss you, Isabelle--
Isabelle?" Lips half parted, she turned her head to him in the dark.
Suddenly the ring of voices, the sound of running footsteps surged toward
them. Quick as a flash Amory reached up and turned on the light, and
when the door opened and three boys, the wrathy and dance-craving Froggy
among them, rushed in, he was turning over the magazines on the table,
while she sat without moving, serene and unembarrassed, and even greeted
them with a welcoming smile. But her heart was beating wildly, and she
felt somehow as if she had been deprived.

It was evidently over. There was a clamor for a dance, there was a
glance that passed between them--on his side despair, on hers regret,
and then the evening went on, with the reassured beaux and the eternal
cutting in.

At quarter to twelve Amory shook hands with her gravely, in the midst of