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ning, if he had liked, with Susy Fairbairn or Rosy, or any of the strange girls about, but she did not like that he should so entirely abandon her for Adelaide. Wherefore she drew herself away out of sight altogether, and sat behind the curtain looking into the garden and up to the dark, quiet sky. Presently Alick, who had been searching for her everywhere, spied her out and came up to her. He too was one of those made wretched by the circumstances of the evening. Indeed, he was always wretched, more or less; but he was one of the kind which gets used to its own unhappiness--even reconciled to it if others are happy. "You are not dancing?" he said to Learn sitting behind the curtain. "No," said Learn with her old disdain for self-evident propositions. "I am sitting here." "Don't you care for dancing?" he asked. He knew that she did, but a certain temperament prefers foolish questions to silence; and Alick Corfield was one who had that temperament. "Not to-night," she answered, looking into the garden, "Why not to-night? and when you dance so beautifully too--just as light as a fairy." "Did you ever see a fairy dance?" was Leam's rejoinder, made quite solemnly. Alick blushed and shifted his long lean limbs uneasily. He knew that when he said these silly things he should draw down on him Leam's rebuke, but he never could refrain. He seemed impelled somehow to be always foolish and tiresome when with her. "No, I cannot say I have ever seen a fairy," he answered with a nervous little laugh. "Then how can you say I dance like one?" she asked in perfect good faith of reproach. "One may imagine," apologized Alick. "One cannot imagine what does not exist," she answered. "You should not say such foolish things." "No, you are right, I should not. I do say very foolish things at times. You are right to be angry with me," he said humbly, and writhing. Leam turned her eyes from him in artistic reprobation of his awkwardness and ungainly homage. She paused a moment: then, as if by an effort, she looked at him straight in the face and kindly. "You are too good to me," she said gently, "and I am too hard on you: it is cruel." "Don't say that," he cried, in real distress now. "You are perfect in my eyes. Don't scold yourself. I like you to say sharp things to me, and to tell me in your own beautiful way that I am stupid and foolish, if really you trust me and respect me a little under it all. But I
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