“The dances you want!” she repeated.  “How do you propose to secure them?  By crushing my fingers or dragging me about by my hair?  I want to tell you something, Duane:  these blunt, masterful men are very amusing on the stage and in fiction, but they’re not suitable to have tagging at heel——­”

“I won’t do any tagging at heel,” he said; “don’t count on it.”

“I have no inclination to count on you at all,” she retorted, thoroughly irritated.

“You will have it some day.”

“Oh!  Do you think so?”

“Yes....  I didn’t mean to speak the way I did.  Won’t you give me a dance or two?”

“No.  I had no idea how horrid you could be....  I was told you were....  Now I can believe it.  Take me to Kathleen; do you hear me?”

After a step or two he said, not looking at her: 

“I’m really sorry, Geraldine.  I’m not a brute.  Something about that fellow Dysart upset me.”

“Please don’t talk about it any more.”

“No....  Only I am glad to see you again, and I do care for your regard.”

“Then earn it,” she said unevenly, as her anger subsided.  “I don’t know very much about men in the world, but I know enough to understand when they’re offensive.”

“Was I?”

“Yes....  Because you carried me away with a high hand, you thought it the easiest way to take with me on every occasion....  Duane, do you know, in some ways, we are somewhat alike?  And that is why we used to fight so.”

“I believe we are,” he said slowly.  “But—­I was never able to keep away from you.”

“Which makes our outlook rather stormy, doesn’t it?” she said, turning to him with all of her old sweet friendly manner. “Do let us agree, Duane.  Mercy on us! we ought to adore each other—­unless we have forgotten the quarrelsome but adorable friendship of our childhood. I thought you were the perfection of all boys.”

“I thought there was no girl to equal you, Geraldine.”

She turned audaciously, not quite knowing what she was saying: 

“Think so now, Duane!  It will be good for us both.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Not—­seriously,” she said....  “And, Duane, please don’t be too serious with me.  I am—­you make me uncertain—­you make me uncomfortable.  I don’t know just what to say to you or just how it will be taken.  You mustn’t be—­that way—­with me; you won’t, will you?”

He was silent for a moment; then his face lighted up.  “No,” he said, laughing; “I’ll open another can of platitudes....  You’re a dear to forgive me.”

* * * * *

Dancing had been general before the cotillion; debutantes continued to arrive in shoals from other dinners, a gay, rosy, eager throng, filling drawing-rooms, conservatory, and library with birdlike flutter and chatter, overflowing into the breakfast-room, banked up on the stairs in bright-eyed battalions.