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94 person. But I don't think that is what you like best."

"What is it that I like best?"

"Something more romantic. I know that I am a very prosaic kind of fellow. But perhaps that wears best in the long run, and most stupid superstitious fancies do admit of a reasonable and natural explanation."

They began to dance. The waltz with him was not quite like the one with Blake. She was conscious of this, and she was angry with herself for being so. Why should a girl, when two men waltz equally well, feel a subtler intoxication in the contact and joint motion with the one than with the other? They had only taken a few turns when she stopped him.

"I don't want to dance. I'm tired."

They went out into the verandah again. He was concerned.

"Something is the matter with you."

"No. Yes—everything is the matter."

"Tell me, Elsie," he said.

"Frank, if I ever give you bad pain—if you are misled by your own fancies, and think me better, and truer, and more sincere than I am, and wake up to find that I am a vain, ambitious, mercenary girl, with no real thought for anyone but herself, don't say that I haven't warned you."

"You have warned me often enough, and I told you that I was quite contented to take the risk. I can't bear you to talk like that, and yet I'm glad too."

"Tell me why you are glad."

"Because if you weren't getting to care for me a little, you wouldn't be troubled at the thought of the suffering you might cause me."

"I am troubled—horribly troubled. And of course I care a little for you. I care a great deal, but it isn't the sort of caring I mean."

"The sort of caring you mean is a romantic dream—the glamour that never was on sea or land, but only in the imagination of romance writers. I don't mind entering the