She seemed to hurry over her last words as though impatient to be done, and wearied and bored by the memory of all these dallyings with sentiment. The mocking merriment appeared also to have died out of her face and voice. She gazed idly at the dancers who, in the restricted space, almost constantly brushed up against them as they stood pressed close to the wall. Paul wondered if he were looking haggard. The air of careless merriment he had at first forced himself to assume had given way, as he listened, to a sort of nervous apathy. The one great passion of hers she had confided to him had drawn him closer to her by its intrinsic dignity. It had appealed to his finer nature, stirring it to its very depths. But these later revelations of hers revolted him by their very pettiness. What had her parents been at that such a girl had been allowed to run wild in that fashion? It was monstrous she had not been supervised and prevented from stooping to these foolish and frivolous relations with foolish and frivolous men--men she had allowed to kiss her lips! The pang that tore him at the image revealed to him how powerless he was. He glanced at her again as she stood at his side. There was a half-sad expression now on her face, which had resumed all its babyishness again. The lock of hair near her ear lay about in a dainty twist. Her lips showed innocent and red. To kiss them _he_ would lay down his life! He was shaken; he wanted to sob aloud. But he was at a festive gathering. Round, round, up and down the room went the dancers, shuffling forward with their rapid glide, the men bending their long, supple bodies, the flowing curves of the women's dresses imparting a greater grace to the movement. The whole scene was dreamy to him. His inner thought was the only reality. Why had she told him, why had she told him? he moaned within himself. Then as he saw a new softness appear in her face, a gleam of comfort came to him. Perhaps it had been from motives of conscience and she really repented all; perhaps, too, she had thought it right to tell him everything before allowing him to ask her to be his. He would overlook all those episodes if only she would be his. If even they had been more serious, if even she had been a dishonoured woman, he knew now he would have had no strength not to condone. If any one had told him a year ago that he--Paul--would one day be both willing and eager to make such concessions as regards the past of a woman he contemplated making his wife, he would have denied the statement indignantly as a libel on himself. She turned suddenly, and their looks met. Her face lighted up with a smile. "Come, Paul, it's your turn now?" "My turn!" he echoed, her words for the moment startlingly sounding like an invitation to take his place in the procession of her lovers. "Yes," she said. "Who was your sweetheart after the gardener's daughter?"