to experience a most peculiar and yet agreeable sensation--as if she
need not trouble about anything in the whole world ever any more. She
remained aware of the music, of the many-coloured throng going round
and round in the last rays of the sunset which mingled so strangely
with the artificial light from the roof of the hall--still she seemed
to be carried along apart from it all; to be enclosed by something
which emanated from the man who held her, and which isolated them both.
Once or twice he made some trivial remark, but nothing to need thinking
about; and when the music stopped she felt for a second or two a sort
of dizziness--like coming too suddenly out of a dim room into a bright
sunlight.

"I must have met you somewhere before," he was saying. "I am sure I
remember your face."

"Yes." She felt the odd dizziness leaving her. With an effort she
forced herself to become alert and keen again. "I expect you've seen
me collecting tickets. I and another girl take it in turns."

"Ah! That must be what I am thinking of," he said. But he searched
his mind in vain for the recollection of a girl at that little window
in the pay-box who could by any magic of clothes and swaying steps be
transformed even for five minutes into a nymph on fire.

But Wilf came up and he had to let her go--felt, indeed, no particular
desire to detain her; for Caroline greeted her admirer with such real
relief that he had no doubt of her feelings. She just caught hold of
Wilf's arm and began at once to move in time to the music, while that
gratified young man nodded jauntily over her shoulder to Wilson and
sailed off, thinking himself very grown-up and experienced and
important--a man with a female for whom he was responsible--one of the
initiate.

Almost immediately after that Wilson went away, but it was three hours
later before Caroline and Wilf, having danced their fill, emerged into
the coolness of the midnight air. As they walked down the dim
promenade together, Wilf was still talking about Wilson. "Some chaps
say he is so stand-offish, but I always hold that people treat you as
you treat them. And if the fellows say anything of the sort to me in
the train, to-morrow, I shall just tell them they're wrong. Most
pleasant, he can be, when he likes."

"Why shouldn't he be?" said Caroline. "You're as good as he is."

"I know that, but I haven't got what he has. You don't understand the
world yet, Carrie, my dear," he said