ow. Our chaise stood ready. I placed her
and followed, and away we rolled down Broadway.

"Am I to have two dances?" I asked.

"Two? Why, you blessed man, you may have twenty!"

She turned to me, eyes sparkling, fan half spread, a picture of
exquisite youth and beauty. Her jewels flashed in the chaise-lamps, her
neck and shoulders glowed clear and softly fair.

"Is that French red on lip and cheek?" I asked, to tease her.

"If there were a certain sort of bridge betwixt Wall Street and the
Fort you might find out without asking," she said, looking me daringly
in the eyes. "Lacking that same bridge, you have another bridge and
another problem, Mr. Renault."

"For lack of a Kissing-Bridge I must solve the _pons asinorum_, I see,"
said I, imprisoning her hands. There was a delicate hint of a struggle,
a little cry, and I had kissed her. Breathless she looked at me; the
smile grew fixed on her red lips.

"Your experience in such trifles is a blessing to the untaught," she
said. "You have not crumpled a ribbon. Truly, Carus, only long and
intense devotion to the art could turn you out a perfect master."

"My compliments to you, Elsin; I take no credit that your gown is
smooth and the lace unruffled."

"Thank you; but if you mean that I, too, am practised in the art, you
are wrong."

The fixed smile trembled a little, but her eyes were wide and bright.

"Would you laugh, Carus, if I said it: what you did to me--is the
first--the very first in all my life?"

"Oh, no," I said gravely, "I should not laugh if you commanded
otherwise."

She looked at me in silence, the light from the chaise-lamps playing
over her flushed face. Presently she turned and surveyed the darkness
where, row on row, ruins of burned houses stood, the stars shining down
through roofless walls.

Into my head came ringing the song that Walter Butler sang:

"Ninon! Ninon! thy sweet life flies!
Wasted in hours day follows day.
The rose to-night to-morrow dies:
Wilt thou disdain to love alway?
How canst thou live unconscious of Love's fire,
Immune to passion, guiltless of desire?"

Now all around us lamplight glimmered as we entered Bowling Green,
where coach and chaise and sedan-chair were jumbled in a confusion
increased by the crack of whips, the trample of impatient horses, and
the cries of grooms and chairmen. In the lamp's increasing glare I made
out a double line of soldiers, through which those in