Page:Tales of Today.djvu/149

Rh Frédéric, his baptismal name. He used to ask you to dance that polka with him, and the mazurka, too, and the waltz. Your voice would tremble a little as you answered: "Yes, sir," and your hand would flutter, also, as you laid it in his, for he was a young man of good family, a pretty hard case, so the rumor was, who had fought a duel and whose father had twice had to pay his debts. What distinction!

How tightly his arm would clasp your waist as he led you to the floor, and when you paused for a moment to take breath, leaning on his arm with a happy smile upon your lips and quickened respiration, how your poor little heart would beat as he turned and looked you in the eyes and addressed to you in low, caressing tones a compliment—upon some trifle, some slight detail of your toilette, or the flower that you had in your hair—a compliment that was perfectly respectful in form, but in which you felt there lurked some hidden meaning that was cause to you at once of fear and pleasure!

But a gay young fellow like M. Frédéric, alas! had something else to do than waste his time at such milk-and-water entertainments. He took himself off to other scenes of gayety and you, is it not true? though you refused to admit it even to yourself, were sorry. Then two, three, four, five years rolled by. You gave up wearing pink dresses, for your cheeks were growing pale, and still at the little bourgeois parties, where the repertory of dance music never changes, they kept playing that old polka that reminded you of M. Frédéric.

At last it became necessary to look at things as they were and come to a decision, so you finally