She pulled out her fan to hide her face, made random answers, laughed at everything Joseph said. He was enchanted, thought that he must have become prodigious witty. He had never seen her so responsive.

The officer rose, stood talking with the others, yet she felt that he was as intensely aware of her as she of him.

He wore a blue coat with red facings, the infantry's full-dress uniform, and a gold epaulet on his right shoulder. That proclaimed him a captain. He was lean and very tall; he towered above his companions, and, despite the conventionality of his dress, there was something rough about him, a hint of the frontier. The set of his head and shoulders seemed to resent the imprisonment of his high black silk stock and the affectation of heavily powdered hair which were required of officers.

His profile was stern; his mouth, though full-lipped, held tight and straight as an Indian's. Furrows ran from his nostrils to the point of his sharp jaw. Though he seemed young, there was gravity and an air of command about him that reminded Theo of General Washington, who must have looked much like this in his youth.

She started as the three knocks from the stage announced the Spanish dancers. The curtains were drawn back. The captain sat down and again looked her full in the face. She saw in his intent eyes the same bewildered questioning that she felt in her own. Her cheeks, her neck grew hot, but she could not look away.

She saw his muscles flex as he checked a quick motion to rise, and knew, because she felt the same impulse in her own body, that he had wanted to vault over the people and the railing between them and come to her. Unconsciously she shook her head, and he nodded. His lips parted in a barely perceptible smile as intimate and understanding as though they had known each other for years.

The dreamlike quality strengthened. Her breath came rapidly. Unseeing, she watched the posturings of the blowsy Spanish dancers, who were rewarded with a shower of cabbages and rotten apples before Mr. Hallam the manager pulled them off the stage with his crook.

'...And high time too, don't you think, Miss Prissy?' asked Aaron jocularly, leaning over her.

She made an inarticulate murmur, unlike her, who usually responded to his lightest word with eager acquiescence. Surprised, he inspected her. Her cheeks were vivid rose. Under the brim of her tiny green hat her eyes shone abnormally bright. He realized, startled, that she looked extraordinarily beautiful, but dazed—moonstruck. His ready apprehensions about her health were aroused.

'Do you feel well, Theo? You're not feverish, are you? It is close in here; shall we leave?'

She stared at him blankly, until, as his words reached her, she managed a gay, natural laugh. 'Oh no, Papa. I feel very well. I don't wish to leave. I'm enjoying the performance tremendously.'