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She was still quite angry when she came out of the dressing-room and crossed the intervening parlor of politeness that opened onto the hall&mdash;angry not so much at the actual happening which was, after all, the merest commonplace of her social existence, but because it had occurred on this particular night. She had no quarrel with herself. She had acted with that correct mixture of dignity and reticent pity which she always employed. She had succinctly and deftly snubbed him.

It had happened when their taxi was leaving the Biltmore&mdash;hadn't gone half a block. He had lifted his right arm awkwardly&mdash;she was on his right side&mdash;and attempted to settle it snugly around the crimson fur-trimmed opera cloak she wore. This in itself had been a mistake. It was inevitably more graceful for a young man attempting to embrace a young lady of whose acquiescence he was not certain, to first put his far arm around her. It avoided that awkward movement of raising the near arm.

His second faux pas was unconscious. She had spent the afternoon at the hairdresser's; the idea of any calamity overtaking her hair was extremely repugnant&mdash;yet as Peter made his unfortunate attempt the point of his elbow had just faintly brushed it. That was his second faux pas. Two were quite enough.

He had begun to murmur. At the first murmur she had decided that he was nothing but a college boy&mdash;Edith was twenty-two, and anyhow, this dance, first of its kind since the war, was reminding her, with the accelerating rhythm of its associations, of something else&mdash;of another dance and another man, a man for whom her feelings had been little more than a sad-eyed,