his hands, as if he could not find a
chance of dismissing himself, and she remained looking down at her skirt
where it tented itself over the toe of her shoe. The tall clock in the
hall ticked second after second. It counted thirty of them at least
before he spoke, after a preliminary noise in his throat.

"There is one thing I should like to ask: If you had cared for me, would
you have been offended at my having thought you looked differently?"

She took time to consider this. "I might have been vexed, or hurt, I
suppose, but I don't see how I could really have been offended."

"Then I understand," he began, in one of his inductive emotions; but she
rose nervously, as if she could not sit still, and went to the piano.
The Spanish song he had given her was lying open upon it, and she struck
some of the chords absently, and then let her fingers rest on the keys.

"Miss Simpson," he said, coming stiffly forward, "I should like to hear
you sing that song once more before I--Won't you sing it?"

"Why, yes," she said, and she slipped laterally into the piano-seat.

At the end of the first stanza he gave a long sigh, and then he was
silent to the close.

As she sounded the last notes of the accompaniment Juliet Bingham burst
into the room with somehow the effect to Langbourne of having lain in
wait outside for that moment.

"Oh, I just _knew_ it!" she shouted, running upon them. "I bet John
anything! Oh, I'm so happy it's come out all right; and now I'm going to
have the first--"

She lifted her arms as if to put them round his neck; he stood dazed,
and Barbara rose from the piano-stool and confronted her with nothing
less than horror in her face.

Juliet Bingham was beginning again, "Why, haven't you--"

"_No!_" cried Barbara. "I forgot all about what you said! I just
happened to sing it because he asked me," and she ran from the room.

"Well, if I ever!" said Juliet Bingham, following her with astonished
eyes. Then she turned to Langbourne. "It's perfectly ridiculous, and I
don't see how I can ever explain it. I don't think Barbara has shown a
great deal of tact," and Juliet Bingham was evidently prepared to make
up the defect by a diplomacy which she enjoyed. "I don't know where to
begin exactly; but you must certainly excuse my--manner, when I came
in."

"Oh, certainly," said Langbourne in polite mystification.

"It was all through a misunderstanding that I don't think _I_ was to
blame for, to say the lea