“Don’t you approve of dancing?” “I never had time to think about it. It always seemed silly to me.” “It’s great fun.” “I’d take lessons if you would agree to teach me, and I could dance with you all the time, and keep all the other fellows away.” “Well, I must say that’s doing fairly well for a timid young man’s first day’s acquaintance. What will you say when you once become fully self-possessed?” She lifted her high arched eyebrows and looked at him with those blue eyes full of tantalising fun until he had to look down at the floor to keep from saying more than he dared. When he looked up again he changed the subject. “Miss Sallie, I feel like I’ve known you ever since I was born.” She blushed and made no reply. Dinner was announced, and Gaston was amazed to see Allan McLeod enter chattering familiarly with the General. He seemed on the most intimate terms with the family and his eye lingered fondly on Sallie’s face in a way that somehow Gaston resented as an impertinence. “I didn’t even know you were acquainted with the Hon. Allan McLeod, Miss Sallie,” said Gaston as they entered the parlour alone. “Yes, he was a sort of ward of Papa’s when he was a boy. Papa hates his politics, but he has always been in and out almost like one of the family since I can remember. I think he’s’ a fascinating man, don’t you?” “I do, but I don’t like him.” “Well, he’s a great friend of mine, you mustn’t quarrel.” Gaston went to the hotel with his brain in a whirl wondering just what she meant. It was nearly twelve o’clock before he left the General’s house. How he had passed these eleven hours he could not imagine. They seemed like eleven minutes in one way. In another he seemed to have lived a lifetime that day. “By George, she’s an angel!” he kept saying over and over to himself as he climbed to his room forgetting the elevator. CHAPTER VI--BESIDE BEAUTIFUL WATERS WHEN Gaston tried to sleep, he found it impossible. His brain was on fire, every nerve quivering with some new mysterious power and his imagination soaring on tireless wings. He rolled and tossed an hour, then got up, and sat by his open window looking out over the city sleeping in the still white moonlight. He looked into the mirror and grinned. “What is the matter with me!” he exclaimed. “I believe I’m going crazy.” He sat down and tried to work the thing out by the formulas of cold reason. “It’s perfectly absurd to say I’m in love. My wild romancing about a passion that will grasp all life in its torrent sweep is only a boy’s day dream. The world is too prosy for that now.” Yet in spite of this argument the room seemed as bright as day, and the moon was only a pale sister light to the radiance from the face of the girl he had seen that day. Her face seemed to him smiling close into his now. The light of her eyes was tender and soothing like the far away memory of his mother’s voice.