"Oh, please do!" she said; and I whisked her out quickly onto one of those verandas as wide as a room. "Could we go home?" she asked piteously, but when I suggested making a dash into the ballroom to find her pal, Mrs. Winston, she wouldn't hear of it. "No," she said, "Molly mustn't be disturbed. It is nothing. Only--I should like to go. If you wouldn't mind." If I wouldn't _mind_! It would have been pretty well worth being born for to drive her back alone, just we two in the car, but I dared not take the child at her word. I thought she was too ill to remember Mrs. Grundy's silly old existence, and I couldn't take advantage of her forgetfulness. At the same time it seemed the act of a prig grafted on to a bounder to put the idea into her head, and make her ashamed of having said the wrong thing. You see what a nuisance my conscience is! I petted it so much when it was young, now it won't stop in its cage. I didn't know what to say, and felt as if it would be money in my pocket not to have been born, for my spirit had melted in me, as one of those soft capsules melts in your mouth. I don't know what I should have said or done, my mental state being that of a hen in front of a motor, if at that instant Mrs. Winston herself hadn't appeared. It was as if my subconscious self had made a dash and dragged her out by the hair! Winston was with her (as Mrs. Shuster ingenuously remarked one day, "That man is as nice to his wife as if he were somebody else's husband"), and they came straight to us, marching solemnly, like a deputation. "Angel child," said Molly (we all think of her as "Molly"), "I noticed you looking a little wan, so Jack and I just waltzed out to see how you were, and also to pat Mr. Storm figuratively on the back." "Why--what has happened?" inquired the princess almost wildly. "Such fun! Envy is the sincerest flattery, so Mr. Storm ought to be pleased that Mr. Caspian hasn't loved him since the day he had his great inspiration about Marcel and Kidd's Pines. It appears that our vaudevillain (isn't that a nice name for dear Eddy?) passed round the word that Mr. Storm had no invitation to this dance, when all the time he had come on the behest of some fearfully celebrated man in New York every one seems to bow down to. Collapse of the gunpowder plot!" "Oh, I'm _so_ thankful!" sighed dear Molly's Angel Child. She clapped her hands and gave a little skip. Then I guessed in a flash why she had looked pale, why she had wanted to get me out of the ballroom, and why she'd been ready to defy old Lady Grundy in order to keep me safe, and avoid hurting the poor secretary-chauffeur's feelings by telling him what was up. That was the moment, my friend, when I realized that I'd always been wrong and you'd always been right. I knew that the girl lit the world for me. Again I ask you, What am I going to do about it?