Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/67

 She was lighting her own little wax taper and she looked her surprise.

"My cigarette?"

He nodded. "You are too lovely."

"But surely you are not so—old-fashioned."

"No. I am perhaps so—new-fashioned that my reason might take your breath away." He laughed but did not explain.

Nancy sat undecided while the taper burned out futilely. Then she said, "Of course you are my host"

"Don't do it for that reason. Do it because"—he stopped, laughed again, and went on—"because you are a goddess—a woman of a new race"

With parted lips she looked at him, then tried to wrench herself back to her attitude of light indifference.

"Oh, we've grown beyond all that."

"All what?"

"Goddess-women. We are just nice and human together."

"You are nice and human. But you are more than that."

Nancy put her unlighted cigarette back in its case. "I'll keep it for next time," she said, with a touch of defiance.

"There will be no next time," was his secure 61