Thrilled with pleasure and excitement, she eagerly consented. Fortunately, she did not have to talk much, for the chatter of the gay crowd, and the hard-working orchestra made conversation difficult, if not impossible.
"I've never been in a place like this before," she ventured. "So late, I mean."
"But you enjoy it, don't you?"
"Oh, yes! So much!" The dark eyes that turned to his were full of happy eagerness, like a child's.
Allison's pulses quickened, with man's insatiable love of Youth. "We'll do it again," he said, "if you'll come with me."
"I will, if Aunt Francesca will let me."
"She's willing to trust you with me, I think. She's known me ever since I was born and she helped father bring me up. Aunt Francesca has been like a mother to me."
"She says she doesn't care for the theatre," resumed Isabel, who did not care to talk about Aunt Francesca, "but I love it. I believe I could go every night."
"Don't make the mistake of going too often to see what pleases you, for you might tire of it. Perhaps plays 'keep best in a cool, dry atmosphere,' as you say men do."
"You're laughing at me," she said, reproachfully.
"Indeed I'm not. I knew a man once who fell desperately in love with a woman, and, as soon as he found that she cared for him, he started for the uttermost ends of the earth."
"What for?"
"That they might not risk losing their love for each other, through satiety. You know it's said to die more often of indigestion than starvation."
"I don't know anything about it," she murmured with downcast eyes.
"You will, though, before long. Some awkward, half-baked young man about twenty will come to you, bearing the divine fire."
"I don't know any," she answered.
"How about the pleasing child who called upon you the other night, with the imported bonbons?" Allison's tone was not wholly kind, for he had just discovered that he did not like Romeo Crosby.
Isabel became fairly radiant with smiles.
"Wasn't he too funny?"
"He's all right," returned Allison, generously, "I'm afraid, however, that he'll be taking you out so much that I won't have a chance."
"Oh, no!" said Isabel, softly. Then she added with frankness utterly free from coquetry, "I like you much better."
"Really? Why, please?"
"Oh, I don't know. You're so much more, well, grown-up, you know, and more refined."
"Thank you, I'm glad the slight foreign polish distinguishes me somewhat"
"Cousin Rose said you were very distinguished." She watched him narrowly as she spoke.
"So is Cousin Rose. In fact, no one could be more so," he answered, with evident approval.