Page:James Hopper--Caybigan.djvu/192

176 She was standing within a circle of bowing, smiling men—a gracious, girlish figure, with magnificent dark eyes. She was evidently a little bored—not bored: lonely. Unconsciously her eyes wandered from the curvetting bipeds in front, in search of something, some warmer, more intimate sympathy, toward a knot of black-garbed men conversing seriously in a corner—the official group, I decided, right away. Perhaps one of these appealing glances reached it, for it broke; a tall figure stalked across the room toward her. It was the Big Man—you could tell it from the sudden illumination of her whole being. She looked up, girlish, admiring. He looked down, protectingly. I heard Dickson panting behind me.

A horrid, racking feeling took possession of me, a mad, monstrous desire to laugh, laugh insanely, in maniac shrieks, to shout and slap my thighs, stamp my feet, scream, scandalise

The Professor, standing beneath the centre candelabra, bent his head paternally over his young wife. The light poured down upon that head. And it was bald.

The muchacho, in a corner of the room, turned something with a sharp click. The lights went out, and the gray pallor of dawn floated in slowly by door