Ned went with me, confused and impulsive and ardent as John was attentive and curiously formal. But I wasn't allowed to remain with either of them. I didn't wish to do so. I was glad that people crowded about me--men in black coats all alike, whose talk was as monotonous as their broad expanses of shirt front or their cat's eye finger rings. But I tried to listen and answer that I might hide from John my tumult. Before long I danced again--this time with some black coat; then with another and another and another; and, at last, once more with Ned. We scarcely spoke, but he did not hide from me the fervour of his look, nor I from him the wild joy of mine. There was no need of words when all was understood, but as he put his arm around me, the tinkling music receded until I could hardly hear it, the figures about us grew indistinct--and in all the world there were left only he and I. "Once there was another Helen," he said. His voice caressed my name. "There have been many; which Helen?" I so loved the word as he had spoken it that I must repeat it after him. "_The_ Helen; there was never another--until you. She was terrible as an army with banners; fair as the sea or the sunset. Men fought for her; died for her. She had hair that meshed hearts and eyes that smote. Sometimes I think--do you believe in soul transmigration?" My heart beat until it choked me. Some voice far in the depths of my soul warned me that I must check him--we must wait until I--he--Milly-- "Sometimes; who does not? But Prof. Darmstetter would say that it was nonsense," I whispered, and waited without power to say another word. "It is true; Helen is alive again, and all men worship her." His eyes were so tenderly regardful that--I could not help it. Once more I raised mine and we read each other's souls. And the music seized us and swept us away with its rapture and its mystery. The rest of the evening comes to me like a dream, through which I floated in the breath of flowers and the far murmur of unheeded talk. I saw little, heard little, yet was faintly conscious that I was the lodestar of all glances and exulting in my triumph. It was marvellous! I didn't dance much. People don't at New York balls. But whether I danced or talked with tiresome men, my heart beat violently because he would see the admiration I won--he would know that I, who was Helen, a Queen to these others, lived only for him, was his slave. There was supper, served at an endless number of little tables; there was a cotillon which I danced with Mr. Bellmer. John stayed in the parlours with Aunt, and Ned danced with Milly, but I was not jealous. Jealous of Milly, with her thin shoulders rising out of her white dress, her colourless eyes and her dull hair dressed like mine with roses? Jealous, when his glance ever sought me; when, as often as we approached in a figure, if I spoke, his eyes answered; if I turned away my face, his grew heavy with pain?