one?"

In impulsive experimentation she gave another tweak to her hair, and
pinched a poor bruised-looking little blush into the hollow of one
thin little cheek. "But suppose it was the--the people--going by," she
faltered, "who never even dreamed that you were a rose? Suppose it was
the--Suppose it was--Suppose--"

Dejection unspeakable settled suddenly upon her--an agonizing sense of
youth's futility. Rackingly above the crash and lilt of music, the
quick, wild thud of dancing feet, the sharp, staccato notes of
laughter--she heard the dull, heavy, unrhythmical tread of the
oncoming years--gray years, limping eternally from to-morrow on,
through unloved lands, on unloved errands.

"This is the end of youth. It is--it is--it is," whimpered her heart.

"It ISN'T!" something suddenly poignant and determinate shrilled
startlingly in her brain. "I'll have one more peep at youth, anyway!"
threatened the brain.

"If we only could!" yearned the discouraged heart.

Speculatively for one brief instant the girl stood cocking her head
toward the door of her father's room. Then, expeditiously, if not
fashionably, she began at once to rearrange her tousled hair, and
after one single pat to her gown--surely the quickest toilet-making of
that festive evening--snatched up a slipper in each hand, crept safely
past her father's door, crept safely out at last through her own door
into the hall, and still carrying a slipper in each hand, had reached