“Girl,” said the Mayor sharply, “is it true?’

“Yes,” said Loveday.

“True!” cried Cherry, “I know ’tes true.  I remember noticing that green mark on the riband when the wreath was laid on the grave.  Ah, she’m a wicked piece, she is.  She tormented my poor Primrose in life and she’s robbed her in death.  You aren’t safe in your grave from she.”

Everyone was speaking against Loveday in rightful indignation by now, and the good wives expressed the opinion that she should be well whipped.  Loveday turned suddenly to Miss Le Pettit.  There were those there—­notably Mr. Constantine, that observant philosopher—­who said afterwards she seemed for one instant to be going to break into impassioned speech.  She did half hold out her hands.  The ends of the white sash, disregarded, fluttered from them as she did so.  But Miss Le Pettit, shocked in all her sensibilities by this vulgar scene, turned away.

“Surely,” said she, “there has been enough time wasted already.  Can we not begin the dance, Mr. Mayor?”

At a sign from the Mayor the band struck up into the tune that was to echo all day through every head and, perhaps, afterwards, through a few kindly hearts.

[Illustration:  Music]

played the band, and, still whispering together with excitement, the dancers fell into place.

“John the beau was walking home, When he met with Sally Dover, He kissed her once, he kissed her twice, And he kissed her three times over.”

It seemed to Loveday that the whole world was dancing.  The faces of the crowd, the bobbing ringlets, swelling skirts, the bright eyes and bright instruments, the houses that peered at her with their polished panes, all danced in a mad haze of mingled light and blackness.  Sun, moon and stars joined in, heads and feet whirled so madly that none could have said which was upper-most.  Creation was a-dancing, and she alone stood to be mocked at in a reeling world.  This was the merry measure she had striven to join!  She must have been mad indeed!

Turning blindly, she ran through the crowd that gave at her approach, and all day the dancing went on without her.  The flutter of her blasphemous sash did not profane the sunlight in the streets of Bugletown, nor pollute with its passing the houses of the good wives.  Like a swallow’s wing, it had but flashed across the ordered ways and was gone.

Yet Loveday’s ambition was, after all, fulfilled that day.  For she danced—­and danced a measure she could not have trod without the white satin sash....  Good folk in Bugletown footed it down the cobbled streets, and through paved kitchens; Loveday danced a finer step on insubstantial ether, into realms more vast.  Were those realms dark for her, thus violated by her enforced entry of them?  Who can say, save those folk of Bugletown who knew that to her first crime she had added a second even greater?