You Took My Heart Read Online Free Page A

the ballet,” Joan suggested. “I’ve never seen a real ballet in my life.”
    Garth looked dubious and said they ought to have seen about getting tickets in advance. Ballet was popular at the moment. But they could try their luck at the booking-office. The theatre was close by and they walked to it through the soft summer twilight. Garth in his dinner-jacket looked more distinguished than any man she had ever seen, Joan thought. She was very proud of him.
    In the theatre foyer he left her to see about the tickets. She waited in a tranced state of interest, savoring the vivid life about her, beautiful women in diamonds and summer ermine moving slowly from limousines to the theatre entrances, their escorts immaculate in formal “tails.” It wasn’t a fashionable moment for ballet, Garth had said. The real ballet season was in June. But fashionable or not, tonight’s display was glittering enough to Joan’s country eyes.
    On the walls of the foyer were photographs of the ballerinas. They were all posed to look soulful and impossibly ethereal. Joan found her attention caught by one face particularly, an odd, pointed face with high, Slavonic cheekbones and great starry eyes. It wasn’t a beautiful face classically but it had a strangely arresting quality. It had more character than the others, a little hard perhaps, but very alluring with its full pouting mouth and rounded chin. There was a scrawled feminine signature in one corner which she could not read.
    When she turned from the pictured face Garth was hurrying back to her. There were no places he told her, or at least nothing but side seats left and they wouldn’t be good. “I’ll bring you here next time you’ve got an evening to spare,” he promised, and she tried to hide her disappointment.
    His hand was warm on her bare arm. “I don’t really want to watch other women dancing, darling,” he whispered. “I want to watch you. I want to dance with you. Let’s go some place where we can.”
    She smiled up at him then, all her disappointment vanishing.
    It was leaving the theatre that they walked bang into Sister Millet, unfamiliar but quite unmistakable in a dowdy brown lace wrap.
    She glared at them, recovered herself quickly and said coldly, “Good evening, Mr. Perros.” To Joan she said nothing.
    Garth was swearing under his breath, hailing a taxi. “Who in heck would have thought of that old trout turning up?” he growled as they got into the cab.
    Joan laughed uncomfortably. “Gemma Crosbie says we get complimentary tickets for everything at St. Angela’s sooner or later. I suppose the Millet picked up a couple for tonight’s ballet. I knew it was her half-day ‘off,’ but I never dreamt she’d be here.”
    “To hell with her,” snapped Garth, furious now with the foolish, cramping rules which bound the girl at his side.
    “It will be ‘to hell’ with me, tomorrow,” Joan reminded him.
    “No, it won’t,” Garth said stoutly. “I’ll see Miss Darley myself first thing in the morning. It is all very well making it a law that probationers are not to run about all over the town with housemen and students, but you and I are different. I refuse to be separated from one of the oldest friends of my life because of the narrow-mindedness of a pack of nursing old women. Not that Miss Darley is narrow. Miss Darley is the soul of reason and I’m sure she will see my point of view. In any case I shall tell her that I intend to go on taking you out, rules or no rules, and if she has any sense she will give in gracefully.”
    “Let’s hope so, anyhow,” Joan murmured, feeling much assured by his outburst.
    They went to a night club, quiet and demure as a church vestry at this early hour. But there was a heavenly floor and a heavenly band and they danced to their heart’s content. In an amazingly short time it was eleven. Joan had to remind Garth of the hour and his face fell.
    “Damn all hospitals and their regulations,” he grumbled. “We