"You didn't remember." It was not a joke any longer now, but a tragedy, and Judith felt overwhelmed by it, alone in the world. "You forgot, and I--remembered."
The brown eyes and the gray met in one last long look and when the brown eyes saw the hurt in Judith's, the laughter died out of them. Again they seemed to be growing nearer and nearer to hers, but this time Judith was not afraid, she was glad.
"If you didn't save my life then, you did to-night." It came in a husky burst of confidence, straight from his shy boy's heart, very rare and very precious. Judith caught her breath.
"Yes. This crowd here had me mad--crazy mad. I was going home. I was going to get off the team. I wasn't going to school next week, and I've worked my hands off to get there. Maybe you remembered and I forgot, but--I won't forget again. You were that little girl." It was not a slight to the little girl she used to be, but a tribute to the girl she was; that was what looked out of his brown eyes at Judith, and sang through the brogue in his voice.
They whirled faster and faster. This was really the end of the dance, and this dance could never come again. Judith held tight to his shiny shoulder, breathless, hurrying to part with her secret and strip herself bare of mystery generously in a breath. All sorts of barriers might come between them, she might put them there herself, and she was quite aware of it, but not yet, not until the music stopped.
"My name's Judith--Judith Randall. Call me Judy."
Colonel Everard sat at the head of his dinner table. A little dinner for twelve was well under way at the Birches. Mrs. Everard was confined to her tower suite to-night with one of the sudden headaches which unkind critics held were likely to come when the Colonel entertained. Randolph Sebastian, his secretary, had superintended the arrangements for the dinner.
Pink roses, rather too many of them, were massed on the big, round table. Rather too much polished silver was to be seen on it; the most ornate candlesticks in the Everard collection, and a too complete array of small, scattered objects, each with a possible but not an essential function, littering a cloth already complicated by elaborate inserts of lace. But the brilliantly lighted, over-decorated table was effective enough in the big, darkly wainscoted room, a little island of light and colour.