with a laughing damsel formed my _vis-a-vis_, but having
eyes only for my partner I saw little but a moving mixture of soft colors
and embroidered deerskin, for some of the men were dressed in prairie
fashion. I felt her warm breath on my neck, the shapely form yielding to
my arm, and it was small wonder that I lost myself in the glamour of it,
until with the crash of a final chord from the piano the music stopped.

"And you have not danced for four years!" she said as I led her through
the press. "Well, it has all come back to you, and out here there is so
much more than dancing for a man to do. Yes, you may put down another,
there toward the end, and fill in the next one two. I have been looking
forward to a quiet talk with you."

I was left alone with pulses throbbing. There was very little in what she
said, but her face showed a kindly interest in our doings, and it was no
small thing that the heiress of Carrington should place me on the level of
an old friend. Harry was chatting merrily with his late partner, who
seemed amused at him, and this was not surprising, for Harry's honest
heart was somewhat strangely united with a silver tongue, and all women
took kindly to him. I found other partners and he did the same, so it was
some time before we met again, and I remember remarking that all this
gaiety and brightness seemed unreal after our quarters at Fairmead, and
ended somewhat lamely:

"I suppose it's out of mere pity she danced with me. As you said, we are
of the soil, earthy, and a princess of the prairie is far beyond our
sphere. Yet she seemed genuinely pleased to see me. If it were even you,
Harry!"

He laughed as he pointed to a large mirror draped in cypress, saying,
"Look into that. You are slow at understanding certain matters, Ralph. Not
seen the whole of your noble self in a glass for two years? Neither have
I. And it hasn't dawned upon you that you came out in the transition
stage--a grub, or shall we say a chrysalis? No, don't wrinkle your
forehead; it's only an allegory. Now you have come out of the
chrysalis--see?"

Part of this was certainly true, for at Coombs' we had the broken half of
a hand-glass to make our simple toilet, and at Fairmead a whole one of
some four inches diameter which cost two bits, tin-backed, at the store,
and I remember saying that it was an extravagance. Now I stared into the
long glass, standing erect in my one gala garment of fringed deerskin.

"A little too bull-n