"Oh, _excuse_ me!" She turned her head aside for a moment in her long gloves. "You _are_ country!" she said again, but it seemed not to displease her. "I don't care so much for her voice, do you?" She turned on the singer. They discussed the entertainment and the dinner. They were a long time about it. The orchestra played a waltz at last, and Ethel--she had told him to call her that--put her arms on the table and leaned across to him, and though Peter knew by this time that her cheeks were painted, he didn't somehow mind it. "What's it like up in the country where you lived?" she wished to know. "Hills mostly, little wooded ones, and high pastures, and the apple orchards going right up over them...." "I know," she nodded. "I guess it's them I been smelling ... or laylocks." "Things coming up in the garden," Peter contributed: "peonies, and long rows of daffodils...." He did not realize it, but he had described to her no place that he had known but the way to the House. The girl cut him off. "Don't!" she said sharply. "You know," she half apologized, "you kind of remind me of somebody ... a boy I knew up country. It was him that got me here----" She made her little admission quietly, the horror of it long worn down to daily habit. "That first time I saw you, it seemed almost as if it was him ... I ain't never blamed him--much. He didn't mean to be bad, but when the trouble came he couldn't help none.... I guess real help is about the hardest thing to find there is." "I guess it is." "Oh, well, we gotta make the best of it." She glanced at Peter with her head on one side as she twiddled her fingers across the cloth to the tune of the orchestra. They went out at last and walked in the least frequented streets, and Peter held her hand; the warmth of it ran with a pleasant tingling in his veins. He seemed to have touched in her palm the point at which the city came alive to him. They walked and walked and yet it seemed that something lacked to bring the evening to a finish; it was incredible to Peter that after all his loneliness he should have to let her go. "We could go up to my place," Ethel suggested. "It's up here." He hadn't suspected that she had been guiding him. "I guess not to-night." Peter's blood was singing in his ears. In the dark of the unfrequented street he could feel her young body leaning toward his. "Say, you know I ain't after the money the way some girls are; I like you ... honest----" "I guess I'd better go home." But they went on up the side street a little farther. "Good-bye," he said, but he did not let her go. She shook her hand free at last. "Oh, well, of course, if you don't want to...." He felt her soft hands fumbling at his face; she drew him down to a kiss. Suddenly she sprang away, laughing. "Go, you silly!"