She said wonderingly: "Had this happened when--I saw you that first
time?"

"It had just happened. I looked the part, didn't I?"

"No. _How_ could you be so--interesting and--and be--what you
were--knowing this all the while?"

"I went to that party absolutely stunned. I saw you in a corner of
the box--I had just been hearing about you--and--I don't know now
what I said to you. Afterward"--he glanced at her--"the world was
spinning, Mrs. Paige. You only remained real--" His face altered
subtly. "And when I touched you----"

"I gave you a waltz, I believe," she said, striving to speak
naturally; but her pulses had begun to stir again; the same
inexplicable sense of exhilaration and insecurity was creeping over
her.

With a movement partly nervous she turned toward the door, but
there sounded no rustle of her sister's skirts from the stairs, and
her reluctant eyes slowly reverted to him, then fell in silence,
out of which she presently strove to extract them both with some
casual commonplace.

He said in a low voice, almost to himself:

"I want you to think well of me."