by the sleek lines of her arms how strong she was.

"It is perhaps too late," he said to himself, in comment. "I am
getting old."

The freshness of the hills in the pale night was sad.

Saddler's, when they reached there after ten, was crowded with the
youth and beauty of the vicinity. Mrs. Carter, who was prepossessing
in a ball costume of silver and old rose, expected that Cowperwood
would dance with her. And he did, but all the time his eyes were on
Berenice, who was caught up by one youth and another of dapper mien
during the progress of the evening and carried rhythmically by in the
mazes of the waltz or schottische. There was a new dance in vogue that
involved a gay, running step--kicking first one foot and then the other
forward, turning and running backward and kicking again, and then
swinging with a smart air, back to back, with one's partner. Berenice,
in her lithe, rhythmic way, seemed to him the soul of spirited and
gracious ease--unconscious of everybody and everything save the spirit
of the dance itself as a medium of sweet emotion, of some far-off,
dreamlike spirit of gaiety. He wondered. He was deeply impressed.

"Berenice," observed Mrs. Carter, when in an intermission she came
forward to where Cowperwood and she were sitting in the moonlight
discussing New York and Kentucky social life, "haven't you saved one
dance for Mr. Cowperwood?"

Cowperwood, with a momentary feeling of resentment, protested that he
did not care to dance any more. Mrs. Carter, he observed to himself,
was a fool.

"I believe," said her daughter, with a languid air, "that I am full up.
I could break one engagement, though, somewhere."

"Not for me, though, please," pleaded Cowperwood. "I don't care to
dance any more, thank you."

He almost hated her at the moment for a chilly cat. And yet he did not.

"Why, Bevy, how you talk! I think you are acting very badly this
evening."

"Please, please," pleaded Cowperwood, quite sharply. "Not any more. I
don't care to dance any more."

Bevy looked at him oddly for a moment--a single thoughtful glance.

"But I have a dance, though," she pleaded, softly. "I was just
teasing. Won't you dance it with me?

"I can't refuse, of course," replied Cowperwood, coldly.

"It's the next one," she replied.

They danced, but he scarcely softened to her at first, so angry was he.
Somehow, because of all that had gone before, he felt stiff and
ungainly. She had managed to brea