Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/31

 was eternal, and that any woman might have it if she would put her hand in her lover's and run away with him on a wild night!

And it was the genius of Jimmie Harding that made us feel that the thing could be done. He sat forward in his chair, his arms on the back of the seat in front of him. "Jove!" he kept saying under his breath. "It's the real thing. It's the real thing"

When the scene was over, he went on the stage and stood by Ursula. Elise from her seat watched them. Ursula had taken off the cap with the pheasant's feather. Her glorious hair shone like copper, her hand was on her hip, her little swagger matched the swagger that we remembered in the old Jimmie. I wondered if Elise remembered.

I am not sure what made Ursula care for Jimmie Harding. He was no longer a figure for romance. But she did care. It was, perhaps, that she saw in him the fundamental things which belonged to both of them, and which did not belong to Elise.

As the days went on I was sorry for Elise. I should never have believed that I could be sorry, but I was. Jimmie was always punctiliously polite to her. But he was only that.

"She's getting what she deserves," Duncan said, but I felt that she was, perhaps, getting more than 25