"You dance well, too, Mr. Odd," she said.

"I very seldom waltz."

"In _my_ honor then?"

"Solely in your honor. I haven't waltzed five times in one evening with one young woman--for ages!"

"You haven't waltzed five times with me yet. I may wear you out!"

"What an implied reflection on my forty years! Do I seem so old to you, Hilda?"

"No; I don't think of you as old."

"But I think of you as young, very young, deliciously young."

"Deliciously?" she repeated. "That is a fallacy, I think. Youth is sad; doesn't see things in _value_; everything is blacker or whiter than reality, so that one is disappointed or desperate all the time."

"And you, Hilda?"

Her eyes swept his with a sweet, half-playful defiance.

"Don't be personal."

"But you were. And, after the other day--your declaration of contentment."

"Everything is comparative. I was generalizing. I hate people who talk about themselves," Hilda added; "it's the worst kind of immodesty.

Material and mental braggarts are far more endurable than the people who go round telling about their souls."

"Severe, rigid child!" Odd laughed, and, after a little pause, laughed again. "You are horribly reserved, Hilda."

"Very sage when one has nothing to show. Silence covers such a mult.i.tude of sins. If one is consistently silent, people may even imagine that one isn't dull," said Hilda maliciously.

"You are dull and silent, then?"

"I have few opinions; that is, perhaps, dulness."

"It may be a very wide cleverness."

"Yes; it may be. Now, Mr. Odd, the next waltz is yours too, you know.

You have quite a cl.u.s.ter here. Let us sit out the next. I should like an ice."

Odd fetched the ice and sat down beside her on a small sofa in a corner of the ballroom. Katherine pa.s.sed, dancing; her dark eyes flashed upon them a glance that might have been one of amus.e.m.e.nt. Odd was conscious of a painful effort in his answering smile.

Hilda's eyes, as she ate her ice, followed her sister with a fond contemplation.

"Isn't that dress becoming to her? The shade of deepening, changing rose."

"Your dress, too, Hilda, is lovely."

"Do you notice dresses, care about them?"

"I think I do, sometimes; not in detail as a woman would, but in the blended effect of dress and wearer."

"I love beautiful dresses. I think this dress is beautiful. Have you noticed the line it makes from breast to hem, that long, unbroken line?

I think that line the secret of elegance. In some gowns one sees one has visions of crushed ribs, don't you think?"

Odd listened respectfully, his mouth twisted a little by that same smile that he still felt to be painful. "And is not this lace gathered around the shoulders pretty too?" Hilda turned to him for inspection.

"You will talk about your clothes, but you will not talk about yourself, Hilda." Odd had put on his eyegla.s.ses and was obediently studying her gown.

"The lace is mamma's. Poor mamma; I know she is lonely. It does seem hard to be left alone when other people are enjoying themselves. She has Meredith's last novel, however. I began it with her. Mr. Odd, I am doing all the talking. _You_ talk now."

"About Meredith, your dress, or you?"

"About yourself, if you please."

"It has seemed to me, Hilda, that you were even less interested in me than you were in yourself."

Hilda looked round at him quickly, and he felt that his eyes held hers with a force which almost compelled her--

"No; I am very much interested in you." Odd was silent, studying her face with much the same expression that he had studied her gown--the expression of painfully controlled emotion.

"There is nothing comparably interesting in me," he said; "I have had my story, or at least I have missed my chance to have a story."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean that I might have made a mark in the world and didn't."

"And your books?"

"They are as negative as I am."

"Yet they have helped me to live." Hilda looked hard at him while she spoke, and a sudden color swept into her face; no confusion, but the emotion of impulsive resolution. Odd, however, turned white.

"Helped you to live, Hilda!" he almost stammered; "my gropings!"

"You may call them gropings, but they led me. Perhaps you were like Virgil to Statius, in Dante. You know? You bore your light behind and lit my path!" She smiled, adding: "I suppose you think you have failed because you have reached no dogmatic absolute conclusion. But you yourself praise n.o.ble failure and scorn cheap success."

"I didn't even know you read my books."

"I know your books very well; much better than I know you."

"Don't say that. I hope that any worth in me is in them."

"One would have to survey your life as a whole to be sure of that.

Perhaps you _do_ even better than you write."

"Ah, no, no; I can praise the books by that comparison." His voice stumbled a little incoherently, and Hilda, rising, said with a smile--