"What do you know of love, you child? Why not have given him a chance, put him on trial? Nothing wins a woman like wooing." "How didactic we are becoming. I am afraid I should really get to loathe poor Lord Allan if I had given him leave to woo me." "I suppose you think him too unindividual, too much of a pattern with other healthy and hearty young men. Don't you know, foolish child, that a good man, a man who would love you as he would, make you the husband he would, is a rarity and very individual?" Odd found a perverse pleasure in his own paternally admonishing attitude. Hilda's lightly amused but touched look implied a confidence so charming that he found the attitude sublimely courageous. "I suppose so," she said, and she added, "I haven't one word to say against Lord Allan, except--" She paused meditatively. "Except what?" Odd asked rather breathlessly. "He doesn't really _need_ me." "Doesn't _need_ you! Why, the man is desperately in love with you!" "He needs a wife, but he doesn't need _me_." "You are subtle, Hilda." "I don't think I am _that_." "You are waiting, then, for some one who can satisfy you as to his _need_ of you?" "I shall only marry that person." Hilda jumped up. "But I'm not waiting at all, you know. _Dansons maintenant!_ Your task is nearly over!" It was very late when Odd gave Hilda up to her last partner, and joined Katherine in a small antechamber, where she was sitting among flowers, talking to an appreciative Frenchman. This gentleman, with the ceremonious bow of his race, made away when Miss Archinard's _fiancé_ appeared, and Odd dropped into the vacated seat with a horrible sinking of the heart. The dull self-reproach was now acute, he felt meanly guilty. Katherine looked at him funnily--very good-humoredly. "I didn't know you had it in you to dance so well and so persistently, Peter. You have done honor to Hilda's ball." "I hope I wasn't too selfishly monopolizing." "Oh, you had a right to a certain monopoly since, owing to you only, she came," and Katherine added, smiling still more good-humoredly, "I am _not_ jealous, Peter." He turned to look at her. The words, the playful tone in which they were uttered, struck him like a blow. His guilty consciousness of his own feeling gave them a supreme nobility. She was _not_ jealous. What a cur he would be if ever he gave her apparent cause for jealousy. The cause was there; his task must be to keep it hidden. "But suppose _I_ am?" he said; "you haven't given me a single dance." Katherine's smile was placid; she did not say that he had not asked for one. Indeed they had rarely danced together. "I think of going to England in a day or two, Peter," she observed. "The Devreuxs have asked me to spend a month with them." Peter sat very still. "A sudden decision, Kathy?" "No, not so sudden. Our _tête-à-tête_ can't be prolonged forever." "Until our wedding day, you mean? Well, the wedding day must be fixed before you go."