Girlie in the arms of Jim spoke to him above her rigid chin.  Girlie had the haughty manner of dancing.

“She’s not much of a looker, is she, Jim?” But the pain in her heart gave the speech an audible edge.

“She’s not much of anything,” said Jim, who had not looked like the young man on the magazine cover for several busy years in vain.  “She’s just a scrap.”

But Girlie could not be deceived.  Sheila’s delicate, crystalline beauty pierced her senses like the frosty beauty of a winter star:  her dress of white mist, her slender young arms, her long, slim, romantic throat, the finish and polish of her, every detail done lovingly as if by a master’s silver-pointed pencil, her hair so artlessly simple and shining, smooth and rippled under the lights, the strangeness of her face!  Girlie told herself again that it was an irregular face, that the chin was not right, that the eyes were not well-opened and lacked color, that the nose was odd, defying classification; she knew, in spite of the rigid ignorance of her ideals, that these things mysteriously spelled enchantment.  Sheila was as much more beautiful than anything Millings had ever seen as her white gown was more exquisite than anything Millings had ever worn.  It was a work of art, and Sheila was, also, in some strange sense, a work of art, something shaped and fashioned through generations, something tinted and polished and retouched by race, something mellowed and restrained, something bred.  Girlie did not know why the white tulle frock, absolutely plain, shamed her elaborate red satin with its exaggerated lines.  But she did know.  She did not know why Sheila’s subtle beauty was greater than her obvious own.  But she did know.  And so great and bewildering a fear did this knowledge give her that, for an instant, it confused her wits.

“She’s going back East soon,” she said sharply.

“Is she?” Jim’s question was indifferent, but from that instant his attention wandered.

When he took the small, crushable silken partner into his arms for “the next after,” a one-step, he was troubled by a sense of hurry, by that desire to make the most of his opportunity that torments the reader of a “best-seller” from the circulating library.

“Say, Miss Arundel,” he began, looking down at the smooth, jewel-bright head, “you haven’t given Millings a square deal.”

Sheila looked at him quizzically.

“You see,” went on Jim, “it’s winter now.”

“Yes, Mr. Greely.  It is winter.”

“And that’s not our best season.  When summer comes, it’s awfully pretty and it’s good fun.  We have all sorts of larks—­us fellows and the girls.  You’d like a motor ride, wouldn’t you?”

“Not especially, thank you,” said Sheila, who really at times deserved the Western condemnation of “ornery.”  “I don’t like motors.  In fact, I hate motors.”

Jim swallowed a nervous lump.  This girl was not “home folks.”  She made him feel awkward and uncouth.  He tried to remember that he was Mr. James Greely, of the Millings National Bank, and, remembering at the same time something that the girl from Cheyenne had said about his smile, he caught Sheila’s eye deliberately and made use of his dimple.