"Why?" asked Edgarton, wincing.
"Because Mother's-dead," she answered simply.
Noisily, like an over conscious throat, the tiny traveling-clock on the mantelpiece began to swallow its moments. One moment-two moments-three-four-five-six moments-seven moments-on, on, on, gutturally, laboriously-thirteen-fourteen-fifteen-even twenty; with the girl still nibbling at her chocolate, and the man still staring off into space with that strange little whimper of pain between his pale, shrewd eyes.
It was the man who broke the silence first. Precipitately he shifted his knees and jostled his daughter to her feet.
"Eve," he said, "you're awfully spleeny to-night! I'm going to bed." And he stalked off into his own room, slamming the door behind him.
Once again from the middle of the floor little Eve Edgarton stood staring blankly after her father. Then she dawdled across the room and opened his door just wide enough to compass the corners of her mouth.
"Father," she whispered, "did Mother know that she was a rose-before you were clever enough to find her?"
"N-o," faltered her father's husky voice. "That was the miracle of it. She never even dreamed-that she was a rose-until I found her."
Very quietly little Eve Edgarton shut the door again and came back into the middle of her room and stood there hesitatingly for an instant.
Then quite abruptly she crossed to her bureau and pushing aside the old ivory toilet articles, began to jerk her tously hair first one way and then another across her worried forehead.
"But if you knew you were a rose?" she mused perplexedly to herself. "That is-if you felt almost sure that you were," she added with sudden humility. "That is-" she corrected herself-"that is-if you felt almost sure that you could be a rose-if anybody wanted you to be one?"
In impulsive experimentation she gave another tweak to her hair, and pinched a poor bruised-looking little blush into the hollow of one thin little cheek. "But suppose it was the-the people-going by," she faltered, "who never even dreamed that you were a rose? Suppose it was the-Suppose it was-Suppose-"
Dejection unspeakable settled suddenly upon her-an agonizing sense of youth's futility. Rackingly above the crash and lilt of music, the quick, wild thud of dancing feet, the sharp, staccato notes of laughter-she heard the dull, heavy, unrhythmical tread of the oncoming years-gray years, limping eternally from to-morrow on, through unloved lands, on unloved errands.
"This is the end of youth. It is-it is-it is," whimpered her heart.
"It ISN'T!" something suddenly poignant and determinate shrilled startlingly in her brain. "I'll have one more peep at youth, anyway!" threatened the brain.
"If we only could!" yearned the discouraged heart.
Speculatively for one brief instant the girl stood cocking her head toward the door of her father's room. Then, expeditiously, if not fashionably, she began at once to rearrange her tousled hair, and after one single pat to her gown-surely the quickest toilet-making of that festive evening-snatched up a slipper in each hand, crept safely past her father's door, crept safely out at last through her own door into the hall, and still carrying a slipper in each hand, had reached the head of the stairs before a new complexity assailed her.
"Why-why, I've never yet-been anywhere-alone-without my mother's memory!" she faltered, aghast.
Then impetuously, with a little frown of material inconvenience, but no flicker whatsoever in the fixed spiritual habit of her life, she dropped her slippers on the floor, sped back to her room, hesitated on the threshold a moment with real perplexity, darted softly to her trunk, rummaged as noiselessly through it as a kitten's paws, discovered at last the special object of her quest-a filmy square of old linen and lace-thrust it into her belt with her own handkerchief, and went creeping back again to her slippers at the head of the stairs.
As if to add fresh nervousness to the situation, one of the slippers lay pointing quite boldly down-stairs. But the other slipper-true as a compass to the north-toed with unmistakable severity toward the bedroom.
Tentatively little Eve Edgarton inserted one foot in the timid slipper. The path back to her room was certainly the simplest path that she knew-and the dullest. Equally tentatively she withdrew from the timid slipper and tried the adventurous one. "O-u-c-h!" she cried out loud. The sole of the second slipper seemed fairly sizzling with excitement.
With a slight gasp of impatience, then, she reached out and pulled the timid slipper back into line, stepped firmly into it, pointed both slipper-toes unswervingly southward, and proceeded on down-stairs to investigate the "Christian Dance."
At the first turn of the lower landing she stopped short, with every ennui-darkened sense in her body "jacked" like a wild deer's senses before the sudden dazzle of sight, sound, scent that awaited her below. Before her blinking eyes she saw even the empty, humdrum hotel office turned into a blazing bower of palms and roses and electric lights. Beyond this bower a corridor opened out-more dense, more sweet, more sparkling. And across this corridor the echo of the unseen ball came diffusing through the palms-the plaintive cry of a violin, the rippling laugh of a piano, the swarming hum of human voices, the swish of skirts, the agitant thud-thud-thud of dancing feet, the throb, almost, of young hearts-a thousand commonplace, every-day sounds merged here and now into one magic harmony that thrilled little Eve Edgarton as nothing on God's big earth had ever thrilled her before.
Hurriedly she darted down the last flight of steps and sped across the bright office to the dark veranda, consumed by one fuming, passionate, utterly uncontrollable curiosity to see with her own eyes just what all that wonderful sound looked like!
Once outside in the darkness her confusion cleared a little. It was late, she reasoned-very, very late, long after midnight probably; for of all the shadowy, flickering line of evening smokers that usually crowded that particular stretch of veranda only a single distant glow or two remained. Yet even now in the almost complete isolation of her surroundings the old inherent bashfulness swept over her again and warred chaotically with her insistent purpose. As stealthily as possible she crept along the dark wall to the one bright spot that flared forth like a lantern lens from the gay ballroom-crept along-crept along-a plain little girl in a plain little dress, yearning like all the other plain little girls of the world, in all the other plain little dresses of the world, to press her wistful little nose just once against some dazzling toy-shop window.
With her fingers groping at last into the actual shutters of that coveted ballroom window, she scrunched her eyes up perfectly tight for an instant and then opened them, staring wide at the entrancing scene before her.
"O-h!" said little Eve Edgarton. "O-h!"
The scene was certainly the scene of a most madcap summer carnival. Palms of the far December desert were there! And roses from the near, familiar August gardens! The swirl of chiffon and lace and silk was like a rainbow-tinted breeze! The music crashed on the senses like blows that wasted no breath in subtler argument! Naked shoulders gleamed at every turn beneath their diamonds! Silk stockings bared their sheen at each new rompish step! And through the dizzy mystery of it all-the haze, the maze, the vague, audacious unreality,-grimly conventional, blatantly tangible white shirt-fronts surrounded by great black blots of men went slapping by-each with its share of fairyland in its arms!
"Why! They're not dancing!" gasped little Eve Edgarton. "They're just prancing!"
Even so, her own feet began to prance. And very faintly across her cheek-bones a little flicker of pink began to glow.
Then very startlingly behind her a man's shadow darkened suddenly, and, sensing instantly that this newcomer also was interested in the view through the window, she drew aside courteously to give him his share of the pleasure. In her briefest glance she saw that he was no one whom she knew, but in the throbbing witchery of the moment he seemed to her suddenly like her only friend in the world.