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