“I see.  When we meet the woman we wish we’d sowed fewer wild oats.  I went through that myself once.  She was a white lily sort of girl and I—­well, I’d gone the pace long before I met her.  I wasn’t fit to touch her and I knew it.  I went down fast after that—­nothing to keep me back.  Old Shakespeare says something somewhere about our pleasant vices beings whips to goad us with.  You and I can understand that, Alan Massey.  We’ve both felt the lash.”

Alan made an impatient gesture.  He did not care to be lumped with this rotten piece of flesh lying there before him.

“I suppose you are wondering what my next move is,” went on Roberts.

“I don’t care.”

“Oh yes, you do.  You care a good deal.  I can break you, Alan Massey, and you know it.”

“Go ahead and break and be damned if you choose,” raged Alan.

“Exactly.  As I choose.  And I can keep you dancing on some mighty hot gridirons before I shuffle off.  Don’t forget that, Alan Massey.  And there will be several months to dance yet, if the doctors aren’t off their count.”

“Suit yourself.  Don’t hurry about dying on my account,” said Alan with ironical courtesy.

A few moments later he was on his way back to the station.  His universe reeled.  All he was sure was that he loved Tony Holiday and would fight to the last ditch to win and keep her and that she would be in his arms to-night for perhaps the last time.  The rest was a hideous blur.

CHAPTER XIV

SHACKLES

The evening was a specially gala occasion, with a dinner dance on, the last big party before Tony went home to her Hill.  The great ball room at Crest House had been decorated with a network of greenery and crimson rambler roses.  A ruinous-priced, de luxe orchestra had been brought down from the city.  The girls had saved their prettiest gowns and looked their rainbow loveliest for the crowning event.

Tony was wearing an exquisite white chiffon and silver creation, with silver slippers and a silver fillet binding her dark hair.  Alan had sent her some wonderful orchids tied with silver ribbon, and these she wore; but no jewelry whatever, not even a ring.  There was something particularly radiant about her young loveliness that night.  The young men hovered about her like honey bees about a rose and at every dance they cut in and cut in until her white and silver seemed to be drifting from one pair of arms to another.

Tony was very gay and bountiful and impartial in her smiles and favors, but all the time she waited, knowing that presently would come the one dance to which there would be no cutting in, the dance that would make the others seem nothing but shadows.

By and by the hour struck.  She saw Alan leave his place by the window where he had been moodily lounging, saw him come toward her, taller than any man in the room, distinguished—­a king among the rest, it seemed to Tony, waiting, longing for his coming? yet half dreading it, too.  For the sooner he came, the sooner it must all end.  She was with Hal at the moment, waiting for the music to begin, but as Alan approached she turned to her companion with a quick appeal in her eyes and a warm flush on her cheeks.