Suddenly the door opened. The curtain-raiser was over. The drama of the evening was about to begin.
It seemed wonderful that the band could keep presence of mind to go on playing the "Merry Widow," instead of stopping short with a gasp and crash of instruments, to start again with the "Tango Trance," her dance in "Girls' Love."
She flashed into the ballroom like a dazzling fairy thing, all white and gold and glitter. Because she knew that—so to speak—the curtain would ring up for her entrance, and not an instant before, in the fondness of her heart for young officers she had not even delayed long enough to change the dress she wore as the Contessa Gaëta in the third act of "Girls' Love." The musical comedy had been written for her. In it she had made her first almost startling success two years ago in London, where, according to the newspapers, all young men worth their salt, from dukes down to draymen, had fallen in love with her. She had captured New York, too, and now she and her company were rousing enthusiasm and coining money on their tour of the larger Western cities.
The Gaëta dress looked as if it were made of a million dewdrops turned to diamonds and sprinkled over a lacy spider-web; the web swathing the tall and wandlike figure of Miss Billie Brookton in a way to show that she had all the delicate perfections of a Tanagra statuette.
Despite the distraction of her entrance, followed by that of the little gray lady engaged as her aunt, the musicians had the self-control to go on with their "Merry Widowing," irrelevant as it now seemed. The dancers went on dancing, also, though the dreaded dimness of extinction had fallen upon even the brightest, prettiest girls, who tried to look particularly rapturous in order to prove that nothing had happened. They felt their partners' interest suddenly withdrawn from them and focussed upon the radiance at the door. No use ignoring that Radiance, even if one had in self-defence to pretend that it didn't matter much, and wasn't so marvellously dazzling after all!
"There goes Mr. Doran to welcome her—of course!" said an Omallaha girl lately back from New York. "I wonder if they really are engaged?"
"Why shouldn't they be?" her partner generously wanted to know. (He was married.)
"Well, for one thing, she doesn't seem the sort of woman who'd care to give up her career. She's so self-conscious that she must be selfish, and then—she's older than he is."
"Good heavens, no! She doesn't look nineteen!"
"On the stage."
"Or off, either."
"Anyhow, some people in New York who know her awfully well told me that she'd never see twenty-nine again. An actress of twenty-nine who can't look nineteen had better go into a convent! Though, when you notice, her mouth and eyes are hard, aren't they? What would Max Doran's wonderful mother say if her son married Billie Brookton?"
"Miss Brookton's father was a clergyman in Virginia. She told me so herself," said the married partner.
"She would—— Oh, I don't mean to be catty. But she must have a background that's a contrast—like that aunt of hers. I don't believe she'd want to marry for years yet—a man who'd make her leave the stage. She has the air of expecting the limelight to follow her everywhere through life, and I'm sure Max Doran's gorgeous mother wouldn't let her daughter-in-law go on acting, even if Max didn't mind."
"Max would mind. He'd never stand it," Max's brother officer informed the girl who had been to New York. "Though he's so simple in his manner, he's proud, I guess. But whether she's nineteen or twenty-nine, I don't see how Billie could do better than take Max Doran, unless she could snap up an English duke. And they say there aren't any unmarried ones going at present. She'd be an addition to this post as a bride, wouldn't she?"
"Ye-es," answered the girl, giving wonderful dramatic value to her pause.
Just then the reign of the "Merry Widow" came to an end, and as soon after as could be, the "Tango Trance" began. The band had practised it in Miss Brookton's honour; and it had been ordered as the first dance after her arrival. The aunt sat down, and Billie Brookton began "tangoing" with Max Doran. They were a beautiful couple to watch; but of course people had to keep up the farce of dancing, too. This was not, after all, a theatre. One was supposed to have come for something else than to stare at Billie Brookton without paying for a place.
"Your pearls," she whispered, as she and Doran danced the tango together, taking graceful steps which she had taught him during the fortnight they had known each other. "How do they look?"
"Glorious on you!" he answered. "And the ring has come. I telegraphed, you know. It's what you wanted. I was able to get it, I'm happy to say. Oh, Billie, can it be possible that I shall have you for mine—all mine? It seems too wonderful to be true."
"I've promised, haven't I?" She laughed half under her breath, a pretty, tinkling laugh. "Honour bright, Max dear, you're the first man I ever said 'yes' to. I hope I shan't be sorry!"
"I won't let you be sorry," whispered Max. "I'll do everything to make you so happy you'll forget the theatre."
"If anything or anybody could make me do that, it would be you," she answered, under cover of the music. "I believe you must be very fascinating, or else I—but never mind—— Now let's stop dancing and you'll show me the ring. I'm engaged for the next—and I can't wait till you and I have another together."
Max took her to sit down at an end of the room uninfested by chaperons. No one at all was there. He had the ring in some pocket, and, by dint of sitting with his "back to the audience," hoped to go through the sacred ceremony without being spied upon. The ring Billie had asked for was a famous blue diamond, of almost as deep a violet as a star-sapphire, and full of strange, rainbow gleams. It had belonged to a celebrated actress who had married an Englishman of title, and on her death it had been advertised for sale. Billie Brookton, who "adored" jewels, and whose birthstone conveniently was the diamond, had been "dying for it." "She was not superstitious," she said, "about dead people's things." Now the blue diamond, with a square emerald on either side, and set in a band of platinum, was hers. She took it between thumb and finger to watch the sparks that came and went, deep under the sea-like surface of blue. As she looked at the ring, Doran looked at her eyelashes.
Never, he thought, could any other woman since the world began have had such eyelashes. They were extraordinarily long and thick, golden brown, and black at the tips. The Omallaha girl who had been to New York thought that Billie Brookton herself had had more to do than heaven in the painting of those curled-up tips. But such a suggestion would have been received with contempt by Max Doran, who at the threshold of twenty-five considered himself a judge of eyelashes. (He was not; nor of a woman's complexion; but believing in himself and in Billie, he was happy.) Miss Brookton had a complexion nearly as white, and it seemed to him—more luminous, more ethereal, than the string of pearls he had given her a month in advance of her birthday. She said it would be her twenty-third, and Max had been incredulous in the nicest way. He would have supposed her to be nineteen at the most, if she had not been so frank.
"Now, if you've looked at the ring enough off your finger, will you let me put it on?" he begged. "I'll make a wish—a good wish: that you shall never grow tired of your bargain. For it is a bargain, isn't it? From the minute this ring is on your finger you're engaged to me."
"What will your beautiful mother say?" asked Billie, hanging back daintily, and doing charming things with her eyelashes.
"Oh, she'll be surprised at first," Max had to admit. "You see, she's so young herself and such a great beauty, it must be hard for her to realize she's got a son who has grown up to be a man. I used to think she was the most exquisite creature on earth, but now——"
His words broke off, and he looked up from the gleaming line of gold-and-black lashes. An orderly had come quickly and almost noiselessly to him. "For you, Lieutenant," the man announced with a salute, holding out a telegram.
"May I?" murmured Doran, and perfunctorily