“That leaves me in a nice hole.  I said I’d go.”

“And why not?  You go to a good many places you don’t take me—­the clubs, brokers’ offices, Stalker’s, the Conventional, and—­”

“Oh, go on.  Why do you object to my going to see this dance?”

“My dear Jack,” said Edith, “I haven’t objected the least in the world;” and her animated face sparkled with a smile, which seemed to irritate Jack more than a frown would have done.

“I don’t see why you set yourself up.  I’ll bet Miss Tavish will raise more money for the Baxter Street Guild, yes, and do more good, than you and the priest and that woman doctor slopping about on the East Side in six months.”

“Very likely,” replied Edith, still with the same good-humored smile.  “But, Jack, it’s delightful to see your philanthropic spirit stirred up in this way.  You ought to be encouraged.  Why don’t you join Miss Tavish in this charity?  I have no doubt that if it was advertised that Miss Tavish and Mr. Jack Delancy would dance for the benefit of an East Side guild in the biggest hall in the city, there wouldn’t be standing room.”

“Oh, bosh!” said Jack, getting up from his chair and striding about the room, with more irritation than he had ever shown to Edith before.  “I wouldn’t be a prude.”

Edith’s eyes flashed and her face flushed, but her smile came back in a moment, and she was serene again.  “Come here, Jack.  Now, old fellow, look me straight in the eyes, and tell me if you would like to have me dance the serpentine dance before a drawing-room full of gossiping women, with, as you say, just a few men peeping in at the doors.”

Jack did look, and the serene eyes, yet dancing with amusement at the incongruous picture, seemed to take a warmer glow of love and pleading.

“Oh, hang it! that’s different,” and he stooped and gave her an awkward kiss.

“I’m glad you know it’s different,” she said, with a laugh that had not a trace of mockery in it; “and since you do, you’d better go along and do your charity, and I’ll stay at home, and try to be—­different when you come back.”

And Jack went; with a little feeling of sheepishness that he would not have acknowledged at the time, and he found himself in a company where he was entirely at his ease.  He admired the dancing of the blithe, graceful girl, he applauded her as the rest did with hand-clapping and bravas, and said it was ravishing.  It all suited him perfectly.  And somehow, in the midst of it all, in the sensuous abandon of this electric-light eccentricity at mid-day, he had a fleeting vision of something very different, of a womanhood of another sort, and a flush came to his face for a moment as he imagined Edith in a skirt dance under the gaze of this sensation-loving society.  But this was only for a moment.  When he congratulated Miss Tavish his admiration was entirely sincere; and the girl, excited with her physical triumph, seemed to him as