Felicia and Lydia Massingbyrd and Cecilia Bennett and I were all sitting together on a commodious window-seat watching the dancers. It was significant of the uncomfortable state of our affairs that Felicia and I only recovered our gaiety and our naturalness toward each other when we had some one to serve as buffer between us; I was talking and laughing with the best, while deep down within me my other self gloomed, fairly smacking his lips over his dismalness, "How little do Felicia and Lydia dream of the trouble gnawing our vitals," when out of the midst of our chaff and gossip popped a word that hit me square in the solar plexus. "Look," said Lydia, "how well the little woman in green dances. She has danced all the evening with the same man." And my little fairy godmother in fluffy green flew past us, as gay and young and happy a little person as I had seen in a month of Sundays. She was so buoyant and pretty that she did one good to see, and my foolish inner self had made a romance about her and the good-looking young fellow, her partner of a whole evening, before little Cecilia Bennett had time to say primly: "That is Mrs. So-and-So." "And that is not, I take it, Mr. So-and-So?" Lydia remarked. "Mr. So-and-So is the big, red-haired man talking with the woman in white lace," replied Cecilia, while disapproval fairly oozed from her. "So there you are, and every one is satisfied," Lydia brushed it aside lightly. "That is how we look to outsiders!" croaked my other self. Then little Cecilia Bennett piped up virtuously, "Even if I didn't love my wife any longer, I should look after her! Until I was engaged, I was _never_ allowed to dance a whole evening with one man----" And as we laughed, she went on with some warmth: "I don't care, I think a man ought to take care of his wife; don't you, Felicia?" "And a little child shall lead us," sententiously remarked my inner self. But Felicia only said flippantly: "If I acted badly, I should expect to be beaten." "Well," said Cecilia, also flippantly, following with disapproving eyes the little person in green, who danced happily by us (it is Cecilia's first season, and such spectacles make her cynical), "Bobby will never beat you, Felicia, however much you need it. Bobby's too kind. He would not even have beaten Lydia!" "Wouldn't you beat me, no matter what I did?" Felicia appealed to me. Then for one second my heart stopped and then raced on again, for the fantastic explanation of her question that came to me was that this was one of the things she had been trying to ask me; that perhaps she had wanted me to beat her and storm and take on, and that I had failed her. "No, Felicia," I replied sadly, "I shall never beat you." I thought she looked disappointed. I wondered if I had really found a light in the darkness that had surrounded us.