“But anyone except that unspeakable Huniack would have done more than grunt!”

“I dare say he doesn’t know English,” Kate insisted.  “He’ll probably remember the incident longer and be sorrier about it than some who would have been able to make graceful apologies.”

“Not he,” declared Ray.  “Don’t you think it!  Bless me, Kate, why you prefer these people to any others passes my comprehension.  Can’t you leave these people to work out their own salvation—­which to my notion is the only way they ever can get it—­and content yourself with your own kind and class?”

“Not variety enough,” retorted Kate, feeling her tenderness evaporate and her tantalizing mood—­her usual one when she was with Ray—­come back.  “Don’t I know just what you, for example, are going to think and say about any given circumstances?  Don’t I know your enthusiasms and reactions as if I’d invented ’em?”

“Well, I know yours, too, but that’s because I love you, not because you’re like everybody else.  I wish you were rather more like other women, Kate.  I’d have an easier time.”

“If we were married,” said Kate, with that cheerful directness which showed how her sentimentality had taken flight, “you’d never give up till you’d made me precisely like Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Smith, and Mrs. Johnson.  Men fall in love with women because they’re different from other women, and then put in the first years of their married life trying to make them like everybody else.  I’ve noticed, however, that when they’ve finished the job, they’re so bored with the result that they go and look up another ‘different’ woman.  Oh, I know!”

He couldn’t say what he wished in reply because the car filled up just then with a party of young people bound for a dance in Russell Square.  It always made Kate’s heart glow to think of things like that—­of what the city was trying to do for its people.  These young people came from small, comfortable homes, quite capacious enough for happiness and self-respect, but not large enough for a dance.  Very well; all that was needed was a simple request for the use of the field-house and they could have at their disposal a fine, airy hall, well-warmed and lighted, with an excellent floor, charming decorations, and a room where they might prepare their refreshments.  All they had to pay for was the music.  Proper chaperonage was required and the hall closed at midnight.  Kate descanted on the beauties of the system till Ray yawned.

“Think how different it is at the dance-hall where we are going,” she went on, not heeding his disinclination for the subject.  “They’ll keep it up till dawn and drink between every dance.  There’s not a party of the kind the whole winter through that doesn’t see the steps of some young girl set toward destruction.  Oh, I can’t see why it isn’t stopped!  If women had the management of things, it would be, I can tell you.  It would take about one day to do it.”