self adrift, his lips,
burning with eagerness, had sought and found hers--upraised. Then she
had broken from his embrace, but not till then. _This_ morning she had
pleaded headache and kept to her room. _This_ afternoon she had had to
meet him, and could not repel, reproach, rebuke as she had at last
meant to do. Others were ever about them then. There must be no scene,
and he was quite capable of making one. And now this night he had come
for her, yes, and for her answer. He was ready, he said, to resign from
the staff at once, return to his regiment, break with the Archers,
explaining that it was all--all a mistake, and then with her promise to
be his wife, what spur would there not be to his ambition? He--but it
all made her feverish--frantic! There was but one refuge--to dance,
dance until her whirling brain and throbbing heart were exhausted in
the wild exhilaration, to dance incessantly, with man after man who
sought her, though few had opportunity owing to his persistence. And
she had been dancing incessantly, as we danced in those days--galop,
deux temps, redowa, waltz, the long, undulating, luxurious, sensuous
sweep of the "glide," and men and women stood and watched them, time
and again, when Willett claimed her--and he hardly had look or word for
others--so wondrous was that harmony of motion, that grace and beauty
of feature and of form. Then at last came exhaustion.

There were some little clumps of cedars on the slope just south of the
assembly hall, as it stood there on the low ground midway between the
head-quarters houses on the ridge to the south, and the even less
commodious cottages of the puny garrison. There was a boardwalk of
creaking pine, leading across the shallow ravine, for it sometimes
rained up here in the mountains, though it never seemed to in the deep,
arid valleys to the east. Then there was a gravel path stretching away
toward the garrison houses north and north-east, and one, still
narrower and crookeder, winding up among the pines and cedars and
disappearing over the top of the knoll, where the broad veranda of the
general's mansion overlooked the entire scene. Sometimes when the
evenings were warm and the dancers flushed, and sometimes even when
there was no such excuse, young couples were wont to saunter out in the
starlight for air and sentiment and "spooning." Already Willett knew
the labyrinth, and welcomed the excuse to lead her forth, his arm
almost supporting her. It was abou