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 of abolishing every inhibition, every faculty except sense, which was left free, tingling, communicable.

Let's talk about my sweetie now!

The vulgarity of it, but the grotesque patness! His partner wouldn't have known the meaning of the American words, even had he sung them aloud, and that added a piquancy to it all. Everything tonight added a piquancy.

Olga was not the same girl: she was a dryad running from his pursuit, yet pausing to let him catch up. Never would he have believed himself capable of holding Olga, of all women in the world, so intimately, of kissing her with such abandon. They said nothing, for words had been abolished along with the rest. She must have been terrifically surprised at his behavior, and her own! yet no faintest sign of surprise was there.

But it was time to go back, and retaining the glow in tightly clasped hands they mounted the stairs. At the door leading to the porch Grover was suddenly reendowed with the necessary, superfluous circumspections of which the dance had momentarily debarrassed him. Glib words were at hand. Oscar was ready with his subconsciously fearful affectionateness, and Mamie rolled her white eyes at Grover in a regard of dawning suspicion—and envy, not malicious, merely pathetic.

During the remainder of the evening Olga resumed her impersonal manner, and not until Grover took leave of them all at his disembarking point did she again