Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/93

 peeped in. Gowns hung there in a row, and below them, innumerable small shoes trod carelessly on one anether's toes.

He stooped to search for a pair of silver ones with little tasseled ties for the insteps, and as he did so he heard a sound.

He sat up, listening. He heard it again. . . a queer little muffled sound, rather like a whimper into a pillow. . ..

"Now who—?" he said aloud. But he knew. Of course. Who else, of all the Zeta Kappa guests, would be crying alone in the dark on prom night?

He went into the hall and called, "Cecily!"

No answer.

"Cecily, it's Jock Hamill. Let me talk to you a minute."

Still no answer.

Jock walked straight across to Dopey Lane's room, entered, and pressed the wall switch. Lights sprang out of the pitch blackness, revealing Cecily.

She lay face downward on the bed, in a heap, as though she had been crumpled like paper and flung there. The silk of her gown wrinkled over her like disturbed water, and her head was visible only as a mesh of thick brown hair framed in a triangle of arm. She looked tragic as she lay there, and crushed, and utterly hopeless.

"Why, Cecily!" Jock said. "Why listen—dear little kid—this won't do at all, you know!" She was the second weeping woman he had seen that night, but she did not affect him as Molly had. Instead she wrung his heart.

"Go away!" she mumbled.

"I will not! You sit up here this minute and tell me what it's all about."