only mean that it
is almost the same out here in the entry as in the hall--you can hear
every note and the floor is smooth and clean. Will you?"

He still hesitated. He certainly felt in no mood for dancing. But when
she suddenly put out her hand with a quick movement to seize her mugs,
as if she interpreted his hesitation to mean that, after all, he felt
himself too good to be her partner, he could not find it in his heart
to let her go away from him a second time feeling mortified and
insulted.

"You are right, child," he said. "Let us dance. A man needn't be
particularly merry to have dancing feet. Come! But you must show me how
they do it here in the country."

He put his arm round her slight and yielding figure, and she clung to
it with evident pleasure. "It goes splendidly," she whispered, after
the first round. "I feel as if I were being lifted up into heaven. Do
you remember how you put me on your horse, that time? Good Heavens! how
long ago that seems, and yet it's only a few weeks!"

He did not answer, but went on dancing, rather gravely and seriously;
for it was no easy task to move easily up and down through the long,
narrow entry. And all the while he felt that his partner clung to him
more and more tenderly, while he himself remained perfectly cool; and
it was only when it seemed to him that they had had enough, and he had
released the girl from his arms again, in front of the chair on which
her beer-mugs stood, that he stroked her round face caressingly and
said: "Was that right, little one?"

She trembled slightly, glancing over his shoulder in the direction of
the stairs which led to the upper story. Suddenly she pushed him from
her, whispered "Thank you," and, quickly seizing her mugs, ran past him
and down the stairs.

He looked after her in surprise. What was it that had transformed this
girl so suddenly? A sudden suspicion arose within him. He rushed toward
the stairs, and peered up into the darkness. There was no longer
anything to be seen. But he heard a light footstep up above creeping
softly across the entry, and immediately afterward the latch of a door
was heard to fall, and a key was turned in the lock.

A cold shiver passed over him, as the thought suddenly flashed across
him that this must have been she. She had started to go and join the
company, and had turned back when half-way down the stairs, in order
not to disturb his dance with a waiting-maid--!

The discovery was so crush