“No, I am all right.  I do want to—­with you,” she added softly.

“We’ll all go over in the launch,” announced Ted, but Larry interposed the fact that he and Ruth were going in the canoe.  Ruth would get too tired if she got into a crowd.

“More professional graft,” complained Ted.  He was only joking but Tony with her sharpened sight knew that it was thin ice for Larry and suspected he had non-professional reasons for wanting Ruth alone in the canoe with him that night.  Poor Larry!  It was all a horrible tangle, just as her affair with Alan was.

It was a night made for lovers, still and starry.  Soft little breezes came tiptoeing along the water from fragrant nooks ashore and stopped in their course to kiss Ruth’s face as she lay content and lovely among the scarlet cushions, reading the eloquent message of Larry Holiday’s gray eyes.

They did not talk much.  They were both a little afraid of words.  They felt as if they could go on riding in perfect safety along the edge of the precipice so long as neither looked over or admitted out loud that there was a precipice.

CHAPTER XVIII

A YOUNG MAN IN LOVE

The dance was well in progress when Larry and Ruth arrived.  The latter was greeted cordially and not too impressively by gay little Sue Emerson, their hostess, and her friends.  Ruth was ensconced comfortably in a big chair where she could watch the dancers and talk as much or little as she pleased.  Everybody was so pleasant and natural and uncurious that she did not feel frightened or strange at all, and really enjoyed the little court she held between dances.  Pretty girls and pleasant lads came to talk with her, the latter besieging her with invitations to dance which she refused so sweetly that they found the little Goldilocks more charming than ever for her very denial.

They rallied Larry however on his rigorous dragonship and finally Ruth herself dismissed him to dance with his hostess as a proper guest should.  She never meant he must stick to her every moment anyway.  That was absurd.  He rose to obey reluctantly; but paused to ask if she wouldn’t dance with him just once.  No, she couldn’t—­didn’t even know whether she could.  He mustn’t try to make her.  And seeing she was in earnest, Larry left her.  But Ted came skating down the floor to her and he begged for just one dance.

“Oh, I couldn’t, Ted, truly I couldn’t,” she denied.

But obeying a sudden impulse Ted had swooped down upon her, picked her up and before she really knew what was happening she had slid into step with him and was whirling off down the floor in his arms.

“Didn’t I tell you, sweetness?” he exulted.  “Of course you can dance.  What fairy can’t?  Tired?” He bent over to ask with the instinctive gentleness that was in all Holiday men.