elf. The small sofa on which she had placed herself had the form to
which the French give the name of _causeuse_; there was room on it for
just another person, and Ransom asked her, with a cheerful accent, if he
might sit down beside her. She turned towards him when he had done so,
turned everything but her eyes, and opened and shut her fan while she
waited for her fit of diffidence to pass away. Ransom himself did not
wait; he took a jocular tone about their encounter, asking her if she
had come to New York to rouse the people. She glanced round the room;
the backs of Mrs. Burrage's guests, mainly, were presented to them, and
their position was partly masked by a pyramid of flowers which rose from
a pedestal close to Olive's end of the sofa and diffused a fragrance in
the air.

"Do you call these 'the people'?" she asked.

"I haven't the least idea. I don't know who any of them are, not even
who Mrs. Henry Burrage is, I simply received an invitation."

Miss Chancellor gave him no information on the point he had mentioned;
she only said, in a moment: "Do you go wherever you are invited?"

"Why, I go if I think I may find you there," the young man replied
gallantly. "My card mentioned that Miss Tarrant would give an address,
and I knew that wherever she is you are not far off. I have heard you
are inseparable, from Mrs. Luna."

"Yes, we are inseparable. That is exactly why I am here."

"It's the fashionable world, then, you are going to stir up."

Olive remained for some time with her eyes fastened to the floor; then
she flashed them up at her interlocutor. "It's a part of our life to go
anywhere--to carry our work where it seems most needed. We have taught
ourselves to stifle repulsion, distaste."

"Oh, I think this is very amusing," said Ransom. "It's a beautiful
house, and there are some very pretty faces. We haven't anything so
brilliant in Mississippi."

To everything he said Olive offered at first a momentary silence, but
the worst of her shyness was apparently leaving her.

"Are you successful in New York? do you like it?" she presently asked,
uttering the inquiry in a tone of infinite melancholy, as if the eternal
sense of duty forced it from her lips.

"Oh, successful! I am not successful as you and Miss Tarrant are; for
(to my barbaric eyes) it is a great sign of prosperity to be the
heroines of an occasion like this."

"Do I look like the heroine of an occasion?" asked Olive Chancellor,
without a