sweet, generous temper should get a dash of sour, only
because of there lying alongside it a clear common-sense and a pure
instinct of justice. Susan's heart longed with a motherly tenderness for
her young sister when she said such words,--longed to put all pleasant
things somehow within her reach. She had given it up for herself, years
since. And now, all at once, Sin Saxon came and "took her out."

It was a more generous act than it shows for, written. There is a little
tacit consent about such things which few young people of a "set" have
thought, desire, or courage to disregard. Sin Saxon never did anything
more gracefully. It was one of the moments that came now, when she wist
not that she shone. She was dropping, little by little, in the reality
of a better desire, that "satisfaction" Jeannie Hadden had spoken of, of
"knowing when one is at one's prettiest," or doing one's cleverest. The
"leaf and the fruit" never fitted better in their significance than to
Sin Saxon. Something intenser and more truly living was taking the place
of the mere flutter and flash and grace of effect.

It was the figure in which the dancers form in facing columns, two and
two, the girls and the young men; when the "four hands round" keeps them
moving in bright circles all along the floor, and under arches of raised
and joined hands the girls came down, two and two, to the end, forming
their long line face to face against the opposing line of their
partners. The German may be, in many respects, an undesirable dance; it
may be, as I have sometimes thought, at least a selfish dance, affording
pleasure chiefly to the initiated few, and excluding gradually, almost
from society itself, those who do not participate in it. I speak of it
here neither to uphold nor to condemn,--simply because they _did_ dance
it at Outledge as they do everywhere, and I cannot tell my story without
it; but I think at this moment, when Sin Saxon led the figure with
Martha Josselyn, there was something lovely, not alone in its graceful
grouping, but in the very spirit and possibility of the thing that so
appeared. There is scope and chance even here, young girls, for the
beauty of kindness and generous thought. Even here, one may give a joy,
may soothe a neglect, may make some heart conscious for a moment of the
great warmth of a human welcome; and, though it be but to a pastime, I
think it comes into the benison of the Master's words when, even for
this, some spiri