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dance.”
    â€œAn expensive dance!”
    â€œNot very .”
    â€œIt would be if I had to get married as a preliminary—rather like burning down the house to cook the bacon.”
    â€œDo!” said Folly.
    â€œBurn the house down?”
    â€œThat would be fun too! But I’d rather have a dance. I do dance well.”
    â€œAren’t you going to play patience to-night?” Betty’s voice was fretful and disapproving.
    â€œNo, I’m going to dance.”
    She set her arms akimbo, whistled shrilly, and began to Charleston. She wore a singularly brief sleeveless garment that ended at the knee. It was black, and it was hemmed with monkey fur. There was a little string of bright beads round her neck, just the sort of thing that she might have worn with socks and sash when she was six years old. The socks had given way to very thin flesh-coloured stockings kept up by scarlet garters which showed every time she kicked. Her dancing had a sort of furious abandonment that was just on the edge of grace, but never overstepped it.
    All of a sudden she stopped quite close to David.
    â€œ Do give a dance! Will you?”
    â€œNo, I won’t.”
    â€œI’m bored with the Charleston—really. I want to learn the Black Bottom. It’s perfectly hideous, and no one knows how to do it properly yet. I do like being ahead of the crowd. Don’t you?”
    â€œNot specially.”
    Folly took him by the lapels of his coat and shook them.
    â€œYou’re as dull as ditch-water!” Then she looked at him full out of her green eyes for just the merest fraction of a second. “I play the piano almost as well as I dance,” she said in her soft purring voice. “I’ll play you things you’ll simply adore.”
    She began to whistle again and danced backwards to the piano, a big lugubrious grand in an ebony case. After pushing at the lid with an ineffective little hand, she raised it half an inch and let it down with a bang.
    â€œDavid—come and open it, David.”
    Betty said, “What’s that?” and then went on telling Eleanor everything that Dick had done and said for the last six years.
    David went across to the piano, opened it, and then stood there, a little curious as to what Miss Folly’s taste in music might be. She settled herself demurely and began to play Mendelssohn’s “Gondellied” in a manner as softly sentimental as if she had been a Victorian miss in a crinoline.
    David glanced at the little sleek black head with the hair cut a good deal shorter than Dicky Lester’s. Then he looked across to where Betty and Eleanor sat under a tall electric lamp.
    Eleanor had on a black dress with long floating sleeves. She was working at a piece of embroidery stretched on a frame, and her lap was full of the brilliant coloured silks—the blue and green of a peacock’s neck and breast; the rose of last year’s roses; the bright sapphire of the little ring he had given her long ago (perhaps she had lost it—or perhaps she had it still). The colours made a shimmering beauty under the lamp. It had a pale blue shade which made Betty look ghastly. He wondered idly whether she knew how unbecoming it was.
    Eleanor, in the same pale light, was beautiful enough. She had the very white skin which sometimes goes with black hair. The line of neck and shoulder was a free and noble one. She looked sometimes at Betty, and sometimes at her rainbow silks. She had cut her hair, but it had its old crisp wave; there were little dark curls that hid her ears.
    Folly March rocked the singing notes and said:
    â€œDavid— David! ”
    He turned his head.
    â€œDo you think Eleanor is beautiful?”
    â€œDo you?”
    â€œYes.”
    David looked back at Eleanor and agreed in silence.
    â€œDavid— David! ”
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œShall I grow my hair?”
    David frowned and said “Yes” rather