er, but take them apart and I warn you the charm will be gone. I
tried it a few evenings ago at my sister's, with Mrs. Grandon, and it
was a wretched, spiritless failure. I wish there was some one else to
play, and you could see them."

Floyd bites his lips, and wonders if Eugene is paying back a
mortification.

"Oh, mamma will play," exclaims Bertie, with alacrity. "She is
wonderfully good at such music, though Mrs. Grandon plays in exquisite
time. Mamma."

"Don't trouble her," entreats Floyd.

Bertie is resolute, Mrs. Dayre obliging, and comes in from her balcony
seat.

"Violet," says Mr. Grandon, "will you waltz awhile? Mrs. Dayre has
kindly offered to play."

"I am not tired," answers Violet, in that curious, breathless tone
which is almost a refusal.

"But I want you to," declares Bertie. "Mr. Eugene has so roused my
curiosity."

Floyd takes her hand with a certain sense of mastery, and she yields.
It is not the glad, joyous alacrity she has heretofore evinced.
Eugene's half-confession, made with a feeling of honor that rarely
attacks the young man, has failed of its mission. Some sense of fine
adjustment is wanting.

Mrs. Dayre strikes into a florid whirl that would answer for a peasant
picnic under the trees.

"Not that," says Eugene. "Some of those lovely, undulating movements.
Oh, there is that Beautiful Blue Danube----"

"Which they waltzed when they came out of the ark," laughs Bertie, "but
it is lovely."

The strain touches Violet. The great animating hope for joy has dropped
out of her life, but youth is left, and youth cannot help being moved.
Mrs. Dayre plays with an enchanting softness, and they float up and
down as in some tranced sea.

"She waltzes fairly," comments Miss Dayre, "only she should be taller.
I should like to waltz with him myself."

"They are a sort of Darby and Joan couple," says Eugene, evasively,
"and his dancing days are about over."

"What a--mistake!" and Bertie laughs brightly. "Why, he is magnificent.
Do you know I had a rather queer fancy about him; you expect literary
men to be--well, grave and severe. The idea of his marrying a child
like that! Why did he do it?"

"Because he loved her," replies the young man, with unblushing
mendacity.

"Literary men and the clergy always do perpetrate matrimony in a
curious manner. Do they go out much?" inclining her head toward the two
floating at the other end of the room.

"Oh, to dinners and that sort of thing!"