“You’re sure you’re old enough to be on the stage, Miss Page; no Gerry Society scandal at the last minute?” he asked banteringly.  “You look about twelve!”

Julia flashed him an oblique look.

“The idea!  I’m nearly seventeen!” she said, with an uncertain little laugh.  His ardent eyes embarrassed her.

“Honest?” said Carter Hazzard, in a low, caressing tone.  He laid his fingers on her arm.  “What’s your hurry?” he asked.

“We ought to keep with the others,” Julia stammered, scarlet cheeked but half laughing.  At the same instant his inclination to cut across her path brought her to a full stop.  She backed against a heavily tasselled and upholstered old armchair that chanced to be standing in the wings, and sitting down on one of its high arms, looked straight up into his eyes.  The others had gone on; they were alone in the draughty wings.

“Why ought we?” said Hazzard, still in a low voice full of significance, his eyes on her shoulder, where he straightened a ruffle that was caught under a chain of beads.  “If you like me and I like you, why shouldn’t we have a little talk?”

However young she might appear, the inanities of a flirtation were a familiar field to Julia.  She gave him a demure and unsmiling glance from between curled lashes, and said: 

“What would you like to talk about?”

By this time their faces were close together; a sort of heady lightness in the atmosphere set them both to laughing foolishly; their voices trembled on uncertain notes.  An exhilarating sense of her own sex and charm thrilled Julia; she knew that he found her sweet and young and wonderful.

“I’d like to talk about you!” said Carter Hazzard.  Julia found his audacity delightful; she began to feel that she could not keep up with the dazzling rush of his repartee.  “You know, the minute I saw you—­” he added.

“Now, don’t tell me I’m pretty!” Julia begged, with another flashing look.

“No—­no!” the man exclaimed, discarding mere beauty with violence.  “Pretty!  Lord! what does prettiness matter?  Of course you’re pretty, but do you know what I said to myself the minute I saw you?  I said, ‘I’ll bet that little girl has brains!’ You smile,” said Mr. Hazzard, with passionate earnestness, “but I’ll swear to God I did!”

“Oh, you just want me to believe that!” scoffed Julia, dimpling.

What they said, however, mattered as little as what might be said by the two occupants of a boat that was drifting swiftly toward rapids.

“Why do you think an unkind thing like that?” Carter asked reproachfully.

“Was that unkind?” Julia countered innocently.  At which Mr. Hazzard observed irrelevantly, in a low voice: 

“Do you know you’re absolutely fascinating?  Do you?  You’re just the kind of little girl I want to know—­to be friends with—­to have for a pal!”

Julia was quite wise enough to know that whatever qualifications she possessed for this pleasing position could hardly have made themselves evident to Mr. Hazzard during their very brief acquaintance, and she was not a shade more sincere than he as she answered coquettishly: