e person in fluffy green clothes
danced inside the circles of our lives, and before she passed out she
had cleared up the mist which encompassed us, unloosed my tongue, and
softened Felicia's heart, and all without being so much as aware of
our existence.

Felicia and Lydia Massingbyrd and Cecilia Bennett and I were all
sitting together on a commodious window-seat watching the dancers. It
was significant of the uncomfortable state of our affairs that Felicia
and I only recovered our gaiety and our naturalness toward each other
when we had some one to serve as buffer between us; I was talking and
laughing with the best, while deep down within me my other self
gloomed, fairly smacking his lips over his dismalness, "How little do
Felicia and Lydia dream of the trouble gnawing our vitals," when out
of the midst of our chaff and gossip popped a word that hit me square
in the solar plexus.

"Look," said Lydia, "how well the little woman in green dances. She
has danced all the evening with the same man." And my little fairy
godmother in fluffy green flew past us, as gay and young and happy a
little person as I had seen in a month of Sundays. She was so buoyant
and pretty that she did one good to see, and my foolish inner self had
made a romance about her and the good-looking young fellow, her
partner of a whole evening, before little Cecilia Bennett had time to
say primly:

"That is Mrs. So-and-So."

"And that is not, I take it, Mr. So-and-So?" Lydia remarked.

"Mr. So-and-So is the big, red-haired man talking with the woman in
white lace," replied Cecilia, while disapproval fairly oozed from
her.

"So there you are, and every one is satisfied," Lydia brushed it aside
lightly.

"That is how we look to outsiders!" croaked my other self.

Then little Cecilia Bennett piped up virtuously, "Even if I didn't
love my wife any longer, I should look after her! Until I was engaged,
I was _never_ allowed to dance a whole evening with one man----"

And as we laughed, she went on with some warmth:

"I don't care, I think a man ought to take care of his wife; don't
you, Felicia?"

"And a little child shall lead us," sententiously remarked my inner
self. But Felicia only said flippantly:

"If I acted badly, I should expect to be beaten."

"Well," said Cecilia, also flippantly, following with disapproving
eyes the little person in green, who danced happily by us (it is
Cecilia's first season, and such spectacles make her cyn