“Oh, I meant after the dance,” she explained.  “I felt sort of wound up and excited after I got back.  And I wanted to see if I could still do it.  I’m glad to say I can,” she ended, with another little laugh.

Her dark eyes shot him a tentative glance.  “Can what?” asked Merryon.

“You’ll be shocked if I tell you.”

“What was it?” he said.

There was insistence in his tone—­the insistence by which he had once compelled her to live against her will.  Her eyelids fluttered a little as it reached her, but she cocked her small, pointed chin notwithstanding.

“Why should I tell you if I don’t want to?” she demanded.

“Why shouldn’t you want to?” he said.

The tip of her tongue shot out and in again.  “Well, you never took me for a lady, did you?” she said, half-defiantly.

“What was it?” repeated Merryon, sticking to the point.

Again she grimaced at him, but she answered, “Oh, I only—­after I’d had my bath—­lay on the floor and ran round my head for a bit.  It’s not a bit difficult, once you’ve got the knack.  But I got thinking of Mrs. Paget—­she does amuse me, that woman.  Only yesterday she asked me what Puck was short for, and I told her Elizabeth—­and then I got laughing so that I had to stop.”

Her face was flushed, and she was slightly breathless as she ended, but she stared across the table with brazen determination, like a naughty child expecting a slap.

Merryon’s face, however, betrayed neither astonishment nor disapproval.  He even smiled a little as he said, “Perhaps you would like to give me lessons in that also?  I’ve often wondered how it was done.”

She smiled back at him with instant and obvious relief.

“No, I shan’t do it again.  It’s not proper.  But I will teach you to dance.  I’d sooner dance with you than any of ’em.”

It was naively spoken, so naively that Merryon’s faint smile turned into something that was almost genial.  What a youngster she was!  Her freshness was a perpetual source of wonder to him when he remembered whence she had come to him.

“I am quite willing to be taught,” he said.  “But it must be in strict privacy.”

She nodded gaily.

“Of course.  You shall have a lesson to-night—­when we get back from the Burtons’ dinner.  I’m real sorry you were bored, Billikins.  You shan’t be again.”

That was her attitude always, half-maternal, half-quizzing, as if something about him amused her; yet always anxious to please him, always ready to set his wishes before her own, so long as he did not attempt to treat her seriously.  She had left all that was serious in that other life that had ended with the fall of the safety-curtain on a certain night in England many aeons ago.  Her personality now was light as gossamer, irresponsible as thistledown.  The deeper things of life passed her by.  She seemed wholly unaware of them.