Quin | Page 3

his dainty partner, carefully avoiding the entrance end of the hall, and devoutly praying that his clumsy army shoes might not crush those little high-heeled brown pumps tripping so deftly in and out between them. He was not used to dancing with officers' girls, and he held the small gray-gloved hand in his big fist as if it were a bird about to take flight.
Next to the return of the Captain, he dreaded that other dancers, seeing his prize, would try to capture her; but there was a certain tempered disdain in the poise of his little partner's head, an ability to put up a quick and effective defense against intrusion, that protected him as well.
Neither of them spoke until the music stopped, and then they stood applauding vociferously, with the rest, for an encore.
"I ought to go," said the Radiant Presence, with a guilty glance upward from under long eyelashes. "You don't see a very cross-looking Captain charging around near the door, do you?"
"No," said Quin, without turning his head, "I don't see him"--and he smiled as he said it.
Now, Quin's smile was his chief asset in the way of looks. It was a leisurely smile, that began far below the surface and sent preliminary ripples up to his eyes and the corners of his big mouth, and broke through at last in a radiant flash of good humor. In this case it met a very prompt answer under the big hat.
"You see, I'm not supposed to be dancing," she explained rather condescendingly.
"Nor me, either," said Quin, breathing heavily.
Then the band decided to be accommodating, and the saxophone decided to out-jazz the piano, and the drum got its ambition roused and joined in the competition, and the young couple who were not supposed to be dancing out-danced everything on the floor!
Quin's heart might have adjusted itself to that first dance, but the rollicking encore, together with the emotional shock it sustained every time those destructive eyes were trained upon him, was too much for it.
"Say, would you mind stopping a bit?--just for a second?" he gasped, when his breath seemed about to desert him permanently.
"You surely aren't tired?" scoffed the young lady, lifting a pair of finely arched eyebrows.
"No; but, you see--as a matter of fact, ever since I was gassed----"
"Gassed!"
The word acted like a charm. The girl's sensitive face, over which the expressions played like sunlight on water, softened to instant sympathy, and Quin, who up to now had been merely a partner, suddenly found himself individual.
"Did you see much actual service?" she asked, her eyes wide with interest.
"Sure," said Quin, bracing himself against a post and trying to keep his breath from coming in jerks; "saw sixteen months of it."
Her quick glance swept from the long scar on his forehead to the bar on his breast.
"What do all those stars on the rainbow ribbon mean?" she demanded.
"Major engagements," said Quin diffidently.
"And the silver one in the middle?"
"A citation," He glanced around to make sure none of the other boys were near, then confessed, as if to a crime: "That's where I got my medal."
"Come over here and sit down this minute," she commanded. "You've got to tell me all about it."
It would be very pleasant to chronicle the fact that our hero modestly declined to take advantage of the opportunity thus offered. But it must be borne in mind that, his heart having failed him at a critical hour, he had to fall back upon his tongue as the only means at hand of detaining the Celestial Being who at any moment might depart. With what breath he had left he told his story, and, having a good story to tell, he did it full justice. Sometimes, to be sure, he got his pronouns mixed, and once he lost the thread of his discourse entirely; but that was when he became too conscious of those star-like eyes and the flattering absorption of the little lady who for one transcendent moment was deigning "to love him for the dangers he had passed." With unabated interest and curiosity she drank in every detail of his recital, her half-parted lips only closing occasionally to say, "Wonderful!" or "How perfectly wonderful!"
On and on went the music, round and round went the dancers, and still the private in the uniform that was too big and the officer's girl in blue and gray sat in the alcove, totally oblivious to everything but each other.
It was not until the girl happened to look at the ridiculous little watch that was pretending to keep time on her wrist that the spell was broken.
"Merciful heaven!" she exclaimed dramatically, "It's six o'clock. What will the family say to me? I must fly this minute."
"But ain't you going to finish this dance with me?" asked Quin with tragic