“Oh, I never was so well in my life!”

“You will pardon me for mentioning it here, but—­but I was sorry to hear from Mr. Harwood that the teaching is necessary.”

He was quite right, she thought, in saying that the time and place were ill-suited to such a remark.  He leaned against the wall and she noticed that his lids drooped wearily.  He seemed content to linger there, where they caught fitfully glimpses of Marian’s bright, happy face in the dance.  Mrs. Owen and Mrs. Bassett were sitting in a group of dowagers at the other end of the ballroom, identifying and commenting upon the season’s debutantes.

“I suppose you are very busy now,” Sylvia remarked.

Yes; this will be a busy session.”

“And I suppose you have more to do than the others; it’s the penalty of leadership.”

He flushed at the compliment, changed his position slightly, and avoided her eyes for a moment.  She detected in him to-night something that had escaped her before.  It might not be weariness after all that prompted him to lean against the wall with one hand carelessly thrust into his pocket; he was not a man to show physical weariness.  It seemed, rather, a stolid indifference either to the immediate scene or to more serious matters.  Their meeting had seemed accidental; she could not believe he had contrived it.  If the dance bored him she was by no means his only refuge; many present would have thought themselves highly favored by a word from him.  A messenger brought Sylvia a question from Mrs. Owen.  In turning away to answer she gave him a chance to escape, but he waited, and when she was free again she felt that he had been watching her.

He smiled, and stood erect as though impelled by an agreeable thought.

“We don’t meet very often, Miss Garrison, and this is hardly the place for long conversations; you’re busy, too; but I’d like to ask you something.”

“Certainly, Mr. Bassett!”

The newest two-step struck up and she swung her head for a moment in time to it and looked out upon the swaying forms of the dancers.

“That’s Marian’s favorite,” she said.

“That afternoon, after the convention, you remember—­”

“Of course, Mr. Bassett; I remember perfectly.”

“You laughed!”

They both smiled; and it seemed to him that now, as then, it was a smile of understanding, a curious reciprocal exchange that sufficed without elucidation in words.

“Well!” said Sylvia.

“Would you mind telling me just why you laughed?”

“Oh!  That would be telling a lot of things.”

Any one seeing them might have thought that this middle-aged gentleman was taking advantage of an opportunity to bask in the smile of a pretty girl for the sheer pleasure of her company.  He was purposely detaining her, but whether from a wish to amuse himself or to mark his indifference to what went on around him she did not fathom.  The fact was that Sylvia had wondered herself a good deal about that interview in Mrs. Owen’s house, and she was not quite sure why she had laughed.