She rose and stood beside him at the table, so that he would feel how
sorry she was, and set one finger to her lips and murmured, "Well,
well!" and at the end of a warm, drowsy moment, after which they seemed
to know each other much better, she said softly and irrelevantly, "I saw
you capped."

"Did you so? How did you notice me? It was one of the big graduations."

"I went with my mother to see my cousin Jeanie capped M.A., and we saw
your name on the list. Philip Mactavish James. And mother said, 'Yon'll
be the son of Mactavish James. Many's the time I've danced with him when
I was Ellen Forbes.' Funny to think of them dancing!"

"Oh, father was a great man for the ladies." They both laughed. He
vacillated from the emotional business of the moment. "Do you dance?" he
asked.

"I did at school--"

"Don't you go to dances?"

She shook her head. It was a shame, thought Mr. Philip.

With that long slender waist she should have danced so beautifully; he
could imagine how her head would droop back and show her throat, how her
brows would become grave with great pleasure. He wished she could come
to his mother's dances, but he knew so well the rigid standards of his
own bourgeoisie that he felt displeased by his wish. It was impossible
to ask a Miss Melville to a dance unless one could say, 'She's the