his heart is young,"

the last line accompanied by a smiling flirt of their
eyes over their shoulders and a kick to the rear as they
wheeled, which evoked the unstinted appreciation of the
house. The girls had the unvarying pink-and-white surfaces
of their profession, but under it they obviously differed
much, and the age and emaciation and ugliness among them
had its common emphasis in the contrast of their smart
masculine attire with the distressingly feminine outlines
of their figures. "I should have thought it impossible
to make a woman absolutely hideous by a dress that revealed
her form," said Kendal to himself, as the jingling and
the dancing and the music went on in the glare before
him, "but, upon my word--" He paused suddenly. She wasn't
absolutely hideous, that tall girl with the plume and
the sword, who maneuvered always in front of the
company--the lieutenant in charge. Indeed, she was comely
every way, slight and graceful, and there was a singular
strong beauty in her face, which was enhanced by the
rouge and the powder, and culminated in the laugh in her
eyes and upon her lips--a laugh which meant enjoyment,
excitement, exhilaration.

It grew upon Kendal that none of the chorus girls approached
Elfrida in the abandon with which they threw themselves
into the representation--that all the others were more
conscious than she of the wide-hipped incongruity of
their role. To the man who beheld her there in an
absolutely new world of light and color and course jest
it seemed that she was perfectly oblivious of any other,
and that her personality was the most aggressive, the
most ferociously determined to be made the most of, on
the stage. As the chorus ceased a half-grown youth remarked
to his companion in front, "But the orficer's the one,
Dave! Ain't she fly!" and the words coming out distinctly
in the moment of after-silence when the applause was
over, set the pit laughing for two or three yards around.
Whereat Kendal, with an assortment of feelings which he
took small pleasure in analyzing later, got up and went
out. People looked up angrily at him as he stumbled over
their too numerous feet in doing so--he was spoiling a
solo of some pathos by Mr. Golightly Ticke in the character
of a princely refugee, a fur-trimmed mantle, and shoes
with buckles.

Kendal informed himself with some severity that no possible
motive could induce him to make any comment upon Miss
Bell to Janet, and found it necessa