gh new and charming.

"It's awfully kind of you to undertake my education in another branch,
Mr. Stewart," she answered, pouting, "in spite of having found out that
I'm not at all clever."

She smiled at him mutinously, sweeping towards the orange with head
thrown back over her left shoulder. Momentarily the poise of her head
recalled the attitude of the portrait of Lady Hammerton, beckoning her
unseen companions to that far-off mysterious mountain country, where the
torrents shine so whitely through the mist and the red line of sunset
speaks of coming night.

Stewart colored, slightly confused. This brutal statement did not seem
to him to represent the just and candid account he had given Miss Walker
of Miss Flaxman's abilities.

"Some one's been misreporting me, I see," he returned. "But anyhow, on
the ice, Miss Flaxman, it's you who are the Professor; I who am the
pupil. So I offer you a fair revenge."

Accordingly, Mildred soon found herself placed at a due distance from
the orange, with Stewart equally distant from it on the other side.
After a few minutes of extreme uneasiness, she discovered that although
she had to halt at each fresh call, she had a kind of mechanical
familiarity with the simple figures which he gave her.

Stewart, though learned, was human; and to sweep now at the opposite
pole to his companion, now with a swing of clasping hands at the centre
of their delightful dance, his eyes always perforce on his charming
partner, and her eyes on him, undeniably raised the pleasure of skating
to a higher power than if he had circled the orange in company with mere
man.

So they fleeted the too-short time in the sparkling blue and white
world, drinking the air like celestial wine.

The Festival of the Frost had fallen in the Christmas Vacation, and
Oxford society in vacation is essentially different from that of
Term-time, when it is overflowed by men who are but birds of passage,
coming no one inquires whence, and flitting few know whither. The party
that picnicked, played hockey, danced and figured on their skates
through the weeks of the frost, was in those days almost like a family
party. So it happened that Ian Stewart met the new Miss Flaxman in an
atmosphere of friendly ease that years of term-time society would not
have afforded him. How new she was he did not guess, but supposed the
change to be in his own eyes. Other people, however, saw it. Her very
skating was different. It had gained