done.

"I don't see why you set yourself up. I'll bet Miss Tavish will raise
more money for the Baxter Street Guild, yes, and do more good, than you
and the priest and that woman doctor slopping about on the East Side in
six months."

"Very likely," replied Edith, still with the same good-humored smile.
"But, Jack, it's delightful to see your philanthropic spirit stirred up
in this way. You ought to be encouraged. Why don't you join Miss Tavish
in this charity? I have no doubt that if it was advertised that Miss
Tavish and Mr. Jack Delancy would dance for the benefit of an East Side
guild in the biggest hall in the city, there wouldn't be standing room."

"Oh, bosh!" said Jack, getting up from his chair and striding about the
room, with more irritation than he had ever shown to Edith before.
"I wouldn't be a prude."

Edith's eyes flashed and her face flushed, but her smile came back in a
moment, and she was serene again. "Come here, Jack. Now, old fellow,
look me straight in the eyes, and tell me if you would like to have me
dance the serpentine dance before a drawing-room full of gossiping women,
with, as you say, just a few men peeping in at the doors."

Jack did look, and the serene eyes, yet dancing with amusement at the
incongruous picture, seemed to take a warmer glow of love and pleading.

"Oh, hang it! that's different," and he stooped and gave her an awkward
kiss.

"I'm glad you know it's different," she said, with a laugh that had not a
trace of mockery in it; "and since you do, you'd better go along and do
your charity, and I'll stay at home, and try to be--different when you
come back."

And Jack went; with a little feeling of sheepishness that he would not
have acknowledged at the time, and he found himself in a company where he
was entirely at his ease. He admired the dancing of the blithe, graceful
girl, he applauded her as the rest did with hand-clapping and bravas, and
said it was ravishing. It all suited him perfectly. And somehow, in the
midst of it all, in the sensuous abandon of this electric-light
eccentricity at mid-day, he had a fleeting vision of something very
different, of a womanhood of another sort, and a flush came to his face
for a moment as he imagined Edith in a skirt dance under the gaze of this
sensation-loving society. But this was only for a moment. When he
congratulated Miss Tavish his admiration was entirely sincere; and the
girl, excited with her physical triumph, seemed