From the terrace stretched a grassy path where other couples were strolling and Johnny Byrd guided her past them. They walked in silence. He kept his hand on her arm and from time to time glanced about at her in a half-constraint that was no part of his usual air.
At a curve of the path the girl drew definitely back.
"Oh, why not? Isn't it the custom?" He laughed over the often-cited phrase but absently. His eyes had a warm, hurrying look in them that rooted her feet the more stubbornly to the ground.
"Decidedly not." She turned a merriment lighted face to him. "To walk alone with a young man--between dances--beneath the moon!"
Maria Angelina shuddered and cast impish eyes at heaven.
"Honestly?" Johnny demanded. "Do you mean to tell me you've never walked between dances with young men?"
"I tell you that I have never even danced with a young man until----" She flashed away from that memory. "Until I came to America. I am not yet in Italian society. I have never been presented. It is not yet my time."
"But--but don't the sub debs have any good times over there? Don't you have dances of your own? Don't you meet fellows? Don't you know anybody?" Johnny demanded with increasing amazement at each new shake of her head.
"Oh, come," he protested. "You can't put that over me. I'll bet you've got a bagful of fellows crazy about you. Don't you ever slip out on an errand, you know, and find some one waiting round the corner----?"
"You are speaking of the customs of my maid, perhaps," said Maria Angelina with becoming young haughtiness. "For myself, I do not go upon errands. I have never been upon the streets alone."
Johnny Byrd stared. With a supreme effort of credulity he envisaged the fact. Perhaps it was really so. Perhaps she was just as sequestered and guileless and inexperienced as that. It was ridiculous. It was amusing. It was--somehow--intriguing.
With his hand upon her bare arm he drew her closer.
"Ri-Ri--honest now--is this the first----?"
She drew away instinctively before the suppressed excitement of him. Her heart beat fast; her hands were very cold. She knew elation . . . and panic . . . and dread and hope.
It was for this she had come. Young and rich and free! What more would Mamma ask? What greater triumph could be hers?