illed,--looked at each
other with flushed cheek,--would have greeted each other, as if they had
just met in a foreign land; but they recovered themselves in time. Nothing
unconventional was said or done.

"Did I dance?" Marie asked herself,--"or was I only looking on?"

One of the dancers scarcely dared to look round, lest it should prove to
be the great-grand-aunt's brocade that she heard rustle behind her; while
another thanked her partner for a chair, with eyes cast down, lest it
might be Cupid that offered it. But the room was the same; there was an
elegant calm over everything. Tea-poys, light chairs, fragile vases have
been undisturbed by crinoline even.

"Are you quite sure this Chinese joss was on this table, when the music
began?" asked Marie's companion of her, whisperingly.

"Oh, hush, you don't think _that_ danced, do you?" said Marie, with a
shudder.

"I hardly know. I think the musician was on this side of the room a little
while ago, piano and all."

"Don't talk so," replied Marie. "They are all going now. I am glad of it.
You will be at the opera to-night? I must say I like opera-music better
than this wild German stuff that sets one's brain whirling!"

"Heels, too, I should say," said her companion; and they took their leave
with the rest.

The next afternoon Arnold was sitting in his room with the windows open.
It was an early spring day, when the outer air was breathing of summer. He
was thinking of how the beautiful, cold Caroline had spoken to him the day
before,--of that wild, appealing tone with which she had called him
Arnold. Before, always, she had given him no more than the greeting of an
acquaintance. Now, the tone in which she had spoken took a significance.
As he was questioning it, recalling it, he suddenly heard his own name
called most earnestly and appealingly. There was a softness, and an agony
too, in its piercing tone, as if it came straight from the heart. "Arnold!
come, come back!" He hurried to the window, wondering if he were under the
influence of some dream. He looked down, and found himself a witness to a
scene that he could not interrupt, because he could not help, and a sudden
word might create danger. It passed very quickly, though it would take
many words to describe it. A piazza led across the windows of the story
below, to a projecting part of the building, the sloping roof of which it
touched. At the other end of the sloping roof, where it met an alley-way
that