beries.

See, now he takes her hand,--the kindly curtain hiding the act from
those within; he stoops towards her; the girl leans a little forward;
and then Dorian knows them; the man is Horace, and the girl Clarissa
Peyton!

Instinctively he glances from them to Ruth. She, too, is leaning
forward, her whole attention concentrated upon the picture before her.
Her eyes are wide and miserable, her cheeks pale and haggard.

"You have seen enough of this ball, Ruth," says Branscombe, very
gently. "Go home now."

"Yes; enough,--too much," says the girl, starting into life again. She
draws her breath quickly, painfully: her brow contracts. As though
unable to resist the movement, she again lays her hand upon her heart,
and holds it there, as though in anguish.

"What is it?" asks Dorian. "Are you in pain? How white you are!"

"I am tired. I have a pain here," pressing her hand still more closely
against her side. "This morning I felt well and strong--and now----.
My mother died of heart-disease; perhaps I shall die of it too. I
think so; I hope so!"

"You are talking very great nonsense," says Dorian, roughly, though in
his soul shocked to the last degree by the girl's manner, which is
full of reckless misery. "Nobody sees any amusement in dying. Come,
let me see you home."

"Oh, no! Please do not come, Mr. Branscombe," entreats she, so
earnestly that he feels she has a meaning in her words. "I have the
key of the small gate, and can run home in five minutes once I pass
that."

"Then at least I shall see you safely as far as the gate," says
Branscombe, who is tender and gentle in his manner to all women.

Silently they walk through the damp night grass, neither speaking,
until, coming to a curve in the way, she breaks silence.

"How beautiful Miss Peyton looks to-night," she says, in a tone
impossible to translate.

"Very," says Dorian, unkindly, yet with very kindly intent. "But then
she is always one of the most beautiful women I know."

"Is she--very much admired?"--this rather timidly.

"One can understand that at once," says Dorian, quietly. "Both her
face and figure are perfect." As he says this, quite calmly, his heart
bleeds for the girl beside him.

"Who has she been dancing most with?" Eagerly, almost painfully, this
question is put. The utter simplicity of it touches Dorian to his
heart's core.

"With my brother, of course. She--she would not care to dance very
much with any one else now, on ac