It appeared that he had heard of Harkless, as well as the Carlow editor of him. They had a few moments of shop, and he talked to Harkless as a brother craftsman, without the offense of graciousness, and spoke of his pleasure in the meeting and of his relief at Harkless's recovery, for, aside from the mere human feeling, the party needed him in Carlow--even if he did not always prove himself “quite a vehement partisan.” Macauley laughed. “But I'm not doing my duty,” he said presently; “I was to present you to the pretty ones only, I believe. Will you designate your preferred fashion of beauty? We serve all styles.” “Thank you,” the other answered, hurriedly. “I met a number last night--quite a number, indeed.” He had seen them only in dim lights, however, and except Miss Hinsdale and the widower, had not the faintest recognition of any of them, and he cut them all, except those two, one after the other, before the evening was over; and this was a strange thing for a politician to do; but he did it with such an innocent eye that they remembered the dark porch and forgave him. “Shall we watch the dancing, then?” asked Macauley. Harkless was already watching part of it. “If you will. I have not seen this sort for more than five years.” “It is always a treat, I think, and a constant proof that the older school of English caricaturists didn't overdraw.” “Yes; one realizes they couldn't.” Harkless remembered Tom Meredith's fine accomplishment of dancing; he had been the most famous dancer of college days, and it was in the dancer that John best saw his old friend again as he had known him, the light lad of the active toe. Other couples flickered about the one John watched, couples that plodded, couples that bobbed, couples that galloped, couples that slid, but the cousins alone passed across the glistening reflections as lightly as October leaves blown over the forest floor. In the midst of people who danced with fixed, glassy eyes, or who frowned with determination to do their duty or to die, and seemed to expect the latter, or who were pale with the apprehension of collision, or who made visible their anxiety to breathe through the nose and look pleased at the same time, these two floated and smiled easily upon life. Three or four steep steps made the portly and cigarette-smoking Meredith pant like an old man, but a dance was a cooling draught to him. As for the little Marquise--when she danced, she danced away with all those luckless hearts that were not hers already. The orchestra launched the jubilant measures of the deux-temps with a torrent of vivacity, and the girl's rhythmic flight answered like a sail taking the breeze.