'You are an angel,' he said humbly. 'I deserve no forgiveness'. He seized her hand and kissed it clumsily. She had much ado not to snatch it away. His lightest touch was distasteful to her, but she was sorry for him, sensing, as her father had done earlier, that beneath his undisciplined emotions and overbearing manner was the heart of an anxious small boy, unsure of himself.

She ran up to her room to repair the damages to her costume.

Two kisses in one day, she thought. Strange that kisses can be so different. The first had been sweet, affectionate almost—and unimportant. She had scarcely thought of it all day While the second—well, that had been thoroughly disagree able, hot, sticky, and dirty as the mud springs at Ballston Spa, yet, once over, it had been unimportant too. Why did romances and people make it appear that kisses were soul-shattering experiences—delights of which one never had enough? Though that happened when one was 'in love'—whatever that was. Loving was easily comprehended: admiration, respect, perhaps a little fear, the way she felt toward Aaron. An immense desire to please him, a sense of unquestioning happiness in his company. But that state of sighings and blushings and dewy-eyed excitement over kisses, phenomena she had observed in several of her friends, why was that so desirable? Or anything but mawkish?

She forgot all speculation when she returned to the drawingroom. The older people had dispersed to the parlor and tearoom for cards, leaving Sophie du Pont, who did not care for high play, to chaperon the dancers.

Theo stood up at once with John Vanderlyn, and discovered that he did, indeed, know the new steps from France. He complimented her on her quickness in learning them, and she smiled with pleasure.

'I must paint you like that, Theo,' he whispered. 'You are youth and grace incarnate.'

She thanked him absently, engrossed with the pleasure of rhythmical motion.

She turned quickly away as Joseph Alston stalked into the room and seated himself alone in a corner. She had done her duty—and more—by that gentleman; she would take good care to avoid him in future.

She could not, however, help noticing that he never took his eyes off her, turning his head so that he might watch her as she passed up and down the floor. When other couples obscured his view, he scowled at them with disconcerting candor.

'You have made another conquest, I see,' laughed Vanderlyn. 'The haughty young man from South Carolina. I trust you don't reciprocate.'

'Fudge!' cried Theo, with an inelegance most unusual to her. 'I cannot abide the man. I vow he resembles a sheep. A fat purple sheep'. For she included Alston's plum-colored suit in her annoyance. Had he not offended sufficiently without making her conspicuous as well?