Meanwhile Godfrey and Gertie were unmindful of everything but the fact that for a brief space they were together, hand touching hand in a clasp of love rather than form, and eye meeting eye with a sad, remorseful kind of pitying tenderness, as if each knew they were tasting forbidden fruit and for the last time, too. This, at least, was Godfrey’s thought. To-morrow it would all be over, and he would be Alice’s again, but to-night he was Gertie’s and she was his, and he abandoned himself to the delight until he seemed intoxicated with happiness. He had never danced with her since the memorable church sociable years ago, when she was a little, airy, restless humming-bird, who had infused something of her own life and elasticity into his rather languid movements and made him try to be worthy of his partner. Gertie was very young then, and no thought of calling her his had entered Godfrey’s heart, where now the sad refrain was repeating itself over and over again, “It might have been, It might have been.” There was another dance, and another, and then Godfrey led Gertie out upon the west balcony where he had proposed taking Alice, and where he now sat down with Gertie at his side, and looking into her eyes of blue forgot the eyes of gray which had followed his every movement, and in which were little gleams of fire when they saw him going out, and the care he took to wrap Gertie’s cloak around her arms and shoulders. It certainly was not chance which led Alice that way; she went on purpose with a group of heated girls eager for a breath of air, and her garments swept against Gertie’s as she went by, and the green eyes looked at Godfrey with a look he understood and did not resent, for he knew that he deserved it, but he was not penitent and he did not give Gertie up until his father, who had been talking politics in a distant room, and did not know of his son’s misdemeanor, came to find her and take her out to supper. Then Godfrey went in quest of Alice, but she was already appropriated by a young Bostonian, who waxed his mustache and wore a quizzing glass on his nose, and her only answer was a little defiant snort when Godfrey said: “I see I am too late.” So Godfrey took me out and was restless and excited and full of life and fun. But I saw that his spirits were forced, and that his eyes went often to the part of the room where Gertie stood, surrounded by a group of gentlemen who were ostensibly talking to Colonel Schuyler, but really admiring her as the most beautiful lady there. Alice was standing near us, and once Godfrey offered her some lobster salad with a comical look on his face, but Alice did not take it or respond to him in any way, and I knew there was a quarrel in store for him, and pitied him because he was answerable for his actions to that little pug-nosed lady whose only attraction, beside a certain grace and piquancy of manner, was thirty thousand a year.