e looked half round and caught his eye.
Just a second, no more; but on her lips had trembled the faintest
suspicion of a smile--a smile that caused his heart to beat madly with
hope, a smile that said things. He sat back in his chair and the hand
that held his glass trembled a little.

"I don't believe you've been listening to me, Billy." The egregious
Jackson emitted a plaintive wail. "I don't believe you've heard a word
I said."

"Perfectly correct in both statements, dear boy!" Billy rose abruptly
to his feet and smacked him on the back. "One must give up something
in Lent, you know."

"But it isn't Lent." Jackson looked aggrieved. "And you've made me
spill my drink."

But he spoke to the empty air and a melancholy waiter, for Billy was
back in the ballroom, waiting. . . .

"You smiled at me, lady, a while ago," he said softly in her ear, as
they swung gently through the crowded room. "I thought it was a smile
that said things. Was thy servant very presumptuous in thus reading
his queen's glance? Confound you, sir; that's my back!"

He glared furiously at a bull-necked thruster in a pink coat.

"Hush, Billy!" laughed the girl, as they lost him in the crowd.
"That's our master!"

"I don't care a hang who he is, but he's rammed one of my brace-buttons
into my spine! He's the sort of man who knocks you down and tramples
on your face, after supper!"

For a few moments they continued in silence, perhaps the two best
dancers in the room, and gradually she seemed to come closer to him, to
give herself up entirely to him, until, as in a dream, they moved like
one being and the music softly died away. For a moment the man stood
still, pressing the girl close to him, and then, with a slight sigh
that was almost one of pain, he let her go.

"Are you glad I taught you to dance?" she asked laughingly; while the
room shouted for an encore.

"Glad," he whispered, "glad! Ah! my lady, my lady, to dance with you
is the nearest approach to heaven that we poor mortals may have. For
all that"--he steered her swiftly through the expectant couples towards
a door covered with a curtain--"I want an answer to a question I asked
you just before my spine was broken!" He held up the curtain for her
to pass through, and piloted her to an easy-chair hidden behind some
screens in a discreetly lighted room. "Did your smile say things, my
lady? Did you tell me something as you went into the ballroom with
that long-hair