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158
FIDELIA

dancing and hush the music and in the silence make Roy Wheen tell what he knew.

Dave felt her shaking. "What is it?" he said.

"David, I'm sick."

At his exclamation, she declared: "I'm sick, sick. That's all."

"You want me to take you home?"

"No! No! I'll lie down in the dressing room. Don't bother about me."

"Alice!" he protested.

They had come to the edge of the ball-room and she slipped away into the dressing room where she remained until midnight when, as the clock turned to morning and Sunday, the Tau Gamma formal was over.

Dave had had his other regular dance with Fidelia; then he had claimed an "extra"—the unnumbered dance, not on the program, which the orchestra leader suddenly announced, "The Tau Gamma extra."

For this dance, each man asked a partner from the floor without pre-arrangement; but for three years Dave and Alice had danced it together. To-night he had Fidelia.

It was a feature dance, always a waltz with emotional music; and at the first encore, the ball-room lights went out except for one cluster of colored bulbs at the center of the room which formed the Tau Gamma shield; so everybody danced slowly and silently in the dim glow of the colored lights.

Following that dance, Dave cast off discretion. He "cut in" on Fidelia's partners and obtained three "encores." He knew that everybody was watching