ons and Mavick and a lot
of people from the provinces were there. The company was more fun than
the dance, especially to a fellow who has seen how good it can be and how
bad in its home."

"You have a chance to see the Spanish dancer again, under proper
auspices," said Edith, without looking up.

"How's that?"

"We are invited by Mrs. Brown--"

"The mother of the Bible class at St. Philip's?"

"Yes--to attend a charity performance for the benefit of the Female
Waifs' Refuge. She is to dance."

"Who? Mrs. Brown?"

Edith paid no attention to this impertinence. "They are to make an
artificial evening at eleven o'clock in the morning."

"They must have got hold of Mavick's notion that this dance is religious
in its origin. Do you, know if the exercises will open with prayer?"

"Nonsense, Jack. You know I don't intend to go. I shall send a small
check."

"Well, draw it mild. But isn't this what I'm accused of doing--shirking
my duty of personal service by a contribution?"

"Perhaps. But you didn't have any of that shirking feeling last night,
did you?"

Jack laughed, and ran round to give the only reply possible to such a
gibe. These breakfast interludes had not lost piquancy in all these
months. "I'm half a mind to go to this thing. I would, if it didn't
break up my day so."

"As for instance?"

"Well, this morning I have to go up to the riding-school to see a horse
--Storm; I want to try him. And then I have to go down to Twist's and see
a lot of Japanese drawings he's got over. Do you know that the birds and
other animals those beggars have been drawing, which we thought were
caricatures, are the real thing? They have eyes sharp enough to see
things in motion--flying birds and moving horses which we never caught
till we put the camera on them. Awfully curious. Then I shall step into
the club a minute, and--"

"Be in at lunch? Bess is coming."

"Don't wait lunch. I've a lot to do."

Edith followed him with her eyes, a little wistfully; she heard the outer
door close, and still sat at the table, turning over the pile of notes at
her plate, and thinking of many things--things that it began to dawn upon
her mind could not be done, and things of immediate urgency that must be
done. Life did not seem quite such a simple problem to her as it had
looked a year ago. That there is nothing like experiment to clear the
vision is the general idea, but oftener it is experience that perplexes.
Indeed, Edith was t