tormented my poor Primrose in life and she's
robbed her in death. You aren't safe in your grave from she."

Everyone was speaking against Loveday in rightful indignation by now,
and the good wives expressed the opinion that she should be well
whipped. Loveday turned suddenly to Miss Le Pettit. There were those
there--notably Mr. Constantine, that observant philosopher--who said
afterwards she seemed for one instant to be going to break into
impassioned speech. She did half hold out her hands. The ends of the
white sash, disregarded, fluttered from them as she did so. But Miss
Le Pettit, shocked in all her sensibilities by this vulgar scene,
turned away.

"Surely," said she, "there has been enough time wasted already. Can we
not begin the dance, Mr. Mayor?"

At a sign from the Mayor the band struck up into the tune that was to
echo all day through every head and, perhaps, afterwards, through a few
kindly hearts.

[Illustration: Music]

played the band, and, still whispering together with excitement, the
dancers fell into place.

"_John the beau was walking home_,
_When he met with Sally Dover_,
_He kissed her once, he kissed her twice_,
_And he kissed her three times over_."

It seemed to Loveday that the whole world was dancing. The faces of the
crowd, the bobbing ringlets, swelling skirts, the bright eyes and bright
instruments, the houses that peered at her with their polished panes,
all danced in a mad haze of mingled light and blackness. Sun, moon and
stars joined in, heads and feet whirled so madly that none could have
said which was upper-most. Creation was a-dancing, and she alone stood
to be mocked at in a reeling world. This was the merry measure she had
striven to join! She must have been mad indeed!

Turning blindly, she ran through the crowd that gave at her approach,
and all day the dancing went on without her. The flutter of her
blasphemous sash did not profane the sunlight in the streets of
Bugletown, nor pollute with its passing the houses of the good wives.
Like a swallow's wing, it had but flashed across the ordered ways and
was gone.

Yet Loveday's ambition was, after all, fulfilled that day. For she
danced--and danced a measure she could not have trod without the white
satin sash.... Good folk in Bugletown footed it down the cobbled
streets, and through paved kitchens; Loveday danced a finer step on
insubstantial ether, into realms more vast. Were those realms dark for
her, t