serve.

"Not one girl in a hundred has so much," she pronounced judgment. "Who
is she? Probably it isn't all her own, anyhow!"

"It is not now, but it was," I said remorsefully.

"How could you tell? Did you measure it?"--with sarcasm. "Do you
remember the maxim we used to write in copybooks? 'Measure a thousand
times, and cut once?' One has to be cautious!"

"I cut it first, and then measured."

"What? Tell me."

At last she was interested and amused. There was no reason why I should
not tell her of my midnight adventure. We never repeated one another's
little confidences.

She listened, with many comments and exclamations, to the story of the
unseen lady, the legend of the fair witch, the dagger that was a
paper-knife by day and the severed tresses. She did not hear of the
singular nightmare or hallucination that had been my second visitor. My
reason had accounted for the experience and dismissed it. Some other
part of myself avoided the memory with that deep, unreasoning sense of
horror sometimes left by a morbid dream.

The dinner crowd had flowed in while we ate and talked. A burst of
applause aroused me to this fact and the commencement of the first show
of the evening. The orchestra had taken their places.

"They will hardly begin with their best act," I remarked, surprised by
Phillida's convulsive start and rapt intentness upon the stretch of ice
that formed the exhibition floor. "Your ballet on skates probably will
come later."

"I did not come to see the ballet," she answered, her voice low.

"No? What, then?"

"A--man I know?"

Once when I was a little fellow, I raced headlong into the low-swinging
branch of a tree, the bough striking me across the forehead so that I
was bowled over backward amid a shower of apples. I felt a twin
sensation, now.

"Here, Phillida?"

"Yes."

"Someone from your home town or your college town?" I essayed a casual
tone.

"Neither. He belongs here, and they call him Flying Vere. He--Look!
Look, Cousin!"

I turned, and saw that the first performer was upon the ice floor.

He came down the center like a silver-shod Mercury. In the silence, for
the orchestra did not accompany his entrance, the faint musical ringing
of his skates ran softly with him. My first unwilling recognition of his
good looks and athletic grace was followed by an equally reluctant
admission of his skill. Reluctant, because my anger and bewilderment
were hot against the man. My little co