Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/65

 pulsing against him, and still it was insoluble. The beautiful face, animate under the spell of the music, seemed more beautiful still. When a single wisp of that bronze-brown hair fell down across a cheek, he wanted to kiss it away. He wanted to. Yet this want assured him definitely of nothing. He had seen many a cheek before that he had desired to kiss. He had never pretended to himself that he was past wanting to kiss a pretty girl.

"Do you golf?" she asked, when the dance was done and the party breaking up—face lighting like the child of the open air she was.

"A duffer's game," confessed Henry, breathing a little quickly, perhaps at the dance, perhaps at wondering if God was about to promise another contact with this fascinating young woman.

"Shall we find out what you mean by that, say, at ten tomorrow?" Billie smiled archly.

Henry's face kindled, then fell as he remembered an appointment to be made with Thomas Scanlon for some time tomorrow morning. "You forget that I am a poor struggler," he bantered; "that only this afternoon I was counseled to struggle hard and that ten is an hour when I should be in my office waiting for clients."

"You win!" the girl conceded with quick laughter, then let her eyes rove the room, saying: "I must fasten upon some idler or spend a lonely morning." But swiftly her glance came back to him and centered upon his with most devastating appeal. "Don't you—don't you think it might be well to—worth your while to idle just one more morning?" she coaxed, glance and tone together shooting Henry all to pieces inside.