within. Suddenly Christine appeared floating lightly through the waltz
in
her
gauzy drapery, as if in a white, misty cloud. Through the narrow opening
she seemed a radiant, living portrait. But her partner whirled her out
of the line of vision. Thus in the mazes of the dance she kept appearing
and disappearing, flashing in sight one moment, leaving a blank in the
crowded room the next.

"So it will ever be, I suppose," he said to himself, bitterly; "chance
and stolen glimpses my only privilege."

Again she appeared, smiling archly on the man whose arm clasped her
waist.

A frown black as night gathered on Dennis's brow; then a sudden pallor
overspread his face to his very lips. The revelation had come! Then
for the first time he knew--knew it as if written in letters of fire
before him--that he loved Christine Ludolph.

At first the knowledge stunned and bewildered him, and his mind was
a confused blur; then as she appeared again, smiling upon and in the
embrace of another man, a sharp sword seemed to pierce his heart.

Dennis was no faint shadow of a man who had frittered away in numberless
flirtations what little heart he originally had. He belonged to the
male species, with something of the pristine vigor of the first man,
who said of the one woman of all the world, "This is now bone of my
bones, and flesh of my flesh"; and one whom he had first seen but a
few short months since now seemed to belong to him by the highest and