But it worked out a little differently. Perhaps Gerald and Walter began it. They had been gay all evening, but they were gayer with the advent of Fliss. They insisted on making her presents, giving her cigarette cases and cuff links so that she wouldn’t feel neglected and putting one of the baby’s fat dolls on the heap of nonsense they laid at her feet. They plied her with dandelion wine and Fliss, taking just a cordial glass more than the other ladies had, proceeded to make herself interesting. Under Cecily’s influence the evening would have mellowed, changed from gayety to soft quiet and seriousness. Under Fliss’s influence gayety mounted higher and higher. It was Fliss who dominated. It was Fliss who got them all into gales of laughter by her tales of her Christmas shopping for Matthew, Fliss who started the competition to see who could blow the candles on the tree out at longest range, Fliss who started a sophisticated little gossip with Mrs. Harrison about the latest and most fascinating scandal, and finally Fliss who offered to show Dick again just how that dance step was managed. “Sorry I can’t demonstrate here,” she said. “Sure you can. Here, roll up the corner of the rug,” suggested Dick. There was a Christmas carol on the Victrola. Cecily watched them whisk it off and change it to a dance tune--watched them wrecking the Christmas scene that she had planned and loved. “Why dance to-night?” she protested, trying to be jocular about it all and succeeding so poorly that every one turned to look at her. There was an undercurrent of angry pain in her voice. Walter came over pulling her to her feet by both hands. “Now, don’t be a crab, Cecily. You’re getting too old for your age. Let’s have some fun.” He whirled her into an absurd dance and when he had finished she was laughing in earnest. But she went over to the sofa on which her mother sat and dropped down beside her. “It wasn’t the kind of evening I’d planned,” she said in an undertone. Mrs. Warner looked at the boys and Fliss and Dick, all grown so uproarious, at her own husband smoking in placid enjoyment as he and Matthew talked politics. “But there’s no harm in it, and you can’t dictate in your own house.” “There is harm in it,” said Cecily, her voice tight and hard. “There is harm in it.” She stayed there a little longer and then slipped from the room. Upstairs beside her window she stood with her hands pressed to her head as if to still the torrent of painful thought that raged through it. The front of her mind seemed trying to reassure the back of it, she thought--the front persisting that as her mother said “there was no harm”--the back protesting against a violation of ideals and sanctities and against cheapness and frivolity. She did not know how long she stood there, how long it was before she heard Dick’s step in the doorway. At the look on his face she knew that he was conscious of no wrong--he was puzzled and a little angry.