I expected every moment to see sea-weeds and
pale-green things sprouting up along its border, and the white bunches
of lilies-of-the-valley in her hair, as they wafted their faint
fragrance toward me, seemed almost an anomaly. She danced, not with
vehement abandon, but with an airy, rhythmical grace, as if the music
had entered into her soul and her limbs were but obeying their innate
tuneful impulse. When we had finished the first waltz, I left her in
the company of one of her Milwaukee friends and started out in quest
of some acceptable male partner whose touch of her I should not feel
to be a positive desecration. I had reached about the middle of the
hall when an affectionate slap on my shoulder caused me to turn
around.

"Dannevig!" I exclaimed, with frigid amazement "By Jove! Where do you
come from? You are as unexpected as a thunderclap from a cloudless
sky."

"Which was a sign that Jupiter was wroth," replied Dannevig, promptly,
"and required new sacrifices. Now the sacrifice I demand of you is
that you shall introduce me to that charming little girl you have had
the undeserved luck of securing."

"You choose your metaphors well," I remarked, calmly. "But, as you
know, even the Romans with all their reputed hardness of heart, were
too conscientious to tolerate human sacrifices. And I, being, in the
present instance, the _pontifex_, would never be a party to such an
atrocity."

The transformation which Dannevig's face underwent was almost
terrible. A look of perfectly animal savageness distorted for a brief
moment his handsome features; his eyes flashed, and his brow was one
mass of wrinkles.

"Do you mean to say that you refuse to introduce me?" he asked, in a
hoarse whisper.

"That is exactly what I mean to say," I answered, with well-feigned
coolness.

"And do you really suppose," he continued, while his brow slowly
relaxed, "that you can prevent me from making that girl's
acquaintance, if I have made up my mind to thwart you?"

"I don't suppose anything of the kind," was my reply. "But you know me
well enough to be aware that you cannot browbeat me. She shall, at all
events, not owe your acquaintance to me."

Dannevig stood for a while, pondering; then with one of those sudden
transitions of feeling which were so characteristic of him, he
continued in a tone of good-fellowship:

"Come, now; this is ridiculous! You have been dining on S----'s
leathery beef-steak, which I have so frequently warn