His older to younger person manner fell away, leaving the man delighting in the girl, a delightfully daring girl it seemed she was, for all that look of fine things he had felt in her just a moment before. He grew newly puzzled about her, and interested in the puzzle. "Would you like to have that someone stand still long enough to give you a good start?" he asked, zestful for following. But she could not go on with it. She was not used to saying daring things to "older men." She was a little appalled at what she had done--saying a thing like that to a man who was married; and yet just a little triumphant in her own audacity, and the way she had been able to make him feel she was something a long way removed from a little girl with flying pigtails. "I really have been grown up for quite a while," she said, suddenly grave. He did not try to bring her back to the other mood,--that astonishing little flare of audacity; he was watching her changing face, like her voice it was sweetly grave. The music had begun again--this time a waltz. A light hand upon her arm, he directed her back towards the dancing floor. "I have this taken," she objected hesitatingly. "This is an extra," he said. She felt sure that it was not; she knew she ought to object, that it was not right to be treating one of the boys of her own crowd that way. But that consciousness of what she ought to be doing fell back--pale, impotent--before the thing she wanted to do.... They were silent for a little time after; without commenting on doing so, they returned to their place outside. "See?" she said presently, "the moon has found another hill. That wasn't there when we were here before." "And beyond that are more hills," he said, "that we don't see even yet." "I suppose," she laughed, "that it's not knowing where we would get makes over the hills and far away--fun." "Well, anything rather than standing still." He said it under his breath, more to himself than to her. But it was to her he added, teasingly and a little lingeringly: "Unless, of course, one were waiting for someone to catch up with one." She smiled without turning to him; watching her, the thought found its way up through the proprieties of his mind that it would be worth waiting a long time if, after the wait, one could go over the hills and far away with a girl through whom life glowed as he could see it glowed in this girl; no, not with a girl like this--boldly, humorously and a little tenderly he amended in his mind--but with _this_ girl. She wheeled about. "I must go back," she said abruptly. "This dance is with Will Blair--I must go back. I'll have a hard enough time," she laughed, a little nervously, "making it right with Louis Stephens." "I'll tell him I heard it was an extra," he said. She halted, looking up at him. "Did you hear that!" she demanded. He seemed about to say some light thing, but that died away. "I wanted the dance," was his quiet reply. CHAPTER SEVEN