"Oh--living is something different from what I always thought! And I must be one of the ones that's intended to know about it!" It was a wonderful, grand feeling; and it was surprising what confidence it gave me. At the foot of the stairs, one of the maids knocked against me with a big branched candlestick she was carrying. "You should be more careful!" I says to her, sharp. And I couldn't help feeling like a great lady when she apologized, scared. In the drawing-room the first person I walked into was Mr. Gerald. I'd been seeing him almost every week--usually he and Miss Antoinette drove me down on Friday nights. But I'd never seen him quite like this. "By jove! By jove!" he said, and bowed over my hand just the way I'd seen him do to other women. "Oh, Cosma!" He'd never called me that before. I liked his saying it, and saying it that way. When I went to meet the rest, and knew he was watching me and that he liked the way I looked--instead of being embarrassed I thought it was fun. And when it was Mr. Gerald that took me down, and we all went into that beautiful room, and to the dinner table that I wasn't afraid of--I can't explain it, but everything I'd ever done before seemed a long way off and I didn't want to bother remembering. It was a happy two hours. After a while I began to want to say little things, and I found I could say them so nobody looked surprised, or glanced at anybody else after I had spoken. That was a wonderful thing, when I first noticed that they didn't glance at each other when I said anything. I saw I could say the truth right out, if I only laughed about it a little bit, and they'd call it "quaint," and laugh too, instead of thinking I was "bad form." There was quite an old man on my right, and I liked that. I always got along better with them than the middle ones that wanted to talk about themselves. Just as soon as the men came up-stairs, Mr. Gerald came where I was. He wanted me to go down the rooms to see a "Chartron." I thought it was some kind of furniture; but when I got there it was a picture of Miss Antoinette, and we sat down with our backs to it. "How are you?" Mr. Gerald said--his voice was kind of like he kept boxes of them and opened one special for you. "Tell me about yourself." "I feel," I said, "as if I'd been sitting on the edge of things all my life, and I'd just jumped over in. It's a pity you never were born again. You can't tell how it feels." "Yes, I was," he said, "I've been born again." "Well, didn't it make you want to forget everything that had happened to you before?" I said. "It does," said Mr. Gerald; "and I have. You know, don't you, that I count time now from the day I met you?" "Great guns!" I said. It took me off my feet so that I didn't remember to say "My word," like they'd told me. I sat and stared at him. He laughed at me. "You wonder!" he said. "They'll never spoil you, after all. Cosma,--couldn't you? Couldn't you?"