d off me has brought me nearer to her and I
just _can't_ think about how I am going to hurt her in a few days
now. I put the thought from me and so let myself swing out into
thoughtlessness with one of the boys. And after that I really didn't
know with whom I was dancing, I began to get so intoxicated with it all.

I never heard musicians play better or get more of the spirit of dance
in their music than those did to-night. They had just given us the
most lovely swinging things, one after another, when suddenly they all
stopped and the leader drew his bow across his violin. Never in all my
life have I ever heard anything like the call of that waltz from that
gipsy's strings. It laughed you a signal and you felt yourself follow
the first strain.

Just then somebody happened to take me from whomever I was with and I
caught step and glided off the universe. The strongest arms that I had
felt that evening--or ever--held me and I didn't have to look up to see
who it was. I don't know why I knew but I did. I wasn't clasped so very
close to him or left to float by myself an inch; I was just a part of
him like the arms themselves or the hand that mine molded into. And
while that wonder-music teased and cajoled and mocked and rocked and
sobbed and throbbed, I laid my cheek against his coat sleeve and gave
myself away, I didn't care to whom.

Again that strange sense of some wonderful eternal good came to me and I
found myself humming Billy's little "soul to keep" prayer against the
doctor's sleeve to the tune of that magic waltz. I had never danced with
him before, of course, but I felt as if I had been doing it always, and
I melted in his arms as that baby had wilted to his mother out in the
cabin a few hours earlier and I don't see how such happiness as that
_could_ stop. But with a soft entreating wail the music came to an
end and there the doctor was, smiling down into my face with his
whimsical friendly smile that woke me up all over.

"Somebody has stolen a rose from the Carter garden and brought it to the
dance," he said with a laugh that was for me alone.

"No," I flashed back, "a string-bean." And with that I danced off again
with the judge, while the doctor disappeared through the door, and I
heard the chuck of his car as it whirled away. He had just stopped in
for a second to see the fun and God had given me that gipsy waltz with
him, because He knew I needed something like that in my life to keep for
always.