"Ain't you goin' t' dance with me at all?" Roeder managed to say to her
in the midst of her laughing altercation with the gentlemen.

"Dance with you!" cried Kate. "How do men learn to dance when they are
up a gulch?"

"I ken dance," he said stubbornly. He was mortified at her chaffing.

"Then you may have the second waltz," she said, in quick contrition.
"Now you other gentlemen have been dancing any number of times these
last fifteen years. But Mr. Roeder is just back from a hard campaign,--a
campaign against fate. My second waltz is his. And I shall dance my
best."

It happened to be just the right sort of speech. The women tried
good-naturedly to make Roeder's evening a pleasant one. They were filled
with compassion for a man who had not enjoyed the society of their sex
for fifteen years. They found much amusement in leading him through the
square dances, the forms of which were utterly unknown to him. But he
waltzed with a sort of serious alertness that was not so bad as it might
have been.

Kate danced well. Her slight body seemed as full of the spirit of the
waltz as a thrush's body is of song. Peter Roeder moved along with
her in a maze, only half-answering her questions, his gray eyes full of
mystery.

Once they stopped for a moment, and he looked down at her, as with
flushed face she stood smiling and waving her gossamer fan, each motion
stirring the frail leaves of the roses he had sent her.

"It's cur'ous," he said softly, "but I keep thinkin' about that black
gulch."

"Forget it," she said. "Why do you think of a gulch when--" She stopped
with a sudden recollection that he was not used to persiflage. But he
anticipated what she was about to say.

"Why think of the gulch when you are here?" he said. "Why, because it
is only th' gulch that seems real. All this,--these pleasant, polite
people, this beautiful room, th' flowers everywhere, and you, and me as
I am, seem as if I was dreamin'. Thar ain't anything in it all that is
like what I thought it would be."

"Not as you thought it would be?"

"No. Different. I thought it would be--well, I thought th' people would
not be quite so high-toned. I hope you don't mind that word."

"Not in the least," she said. "It's a musical term. It applies very well
to people."

They took up the dance again and waltzed breathlessly till the close.
Kate was tired; the exertion had been a little more than she had
bargained for. She sat very still on the veranda