"I wish," she cried, all at once, "I wish I had dressed as 'Carmen,' and I would have danced for you. Oh, and you could have played the air for me on the organ. I have the costume upstairs now. Wait! I will, I will! Sit right where you are--no, fix the attachment to the organ while I'm gone. Oh, be gay with me to-night," she cried, throwing her arms around him. "This is my night, isn't it? And I am to be just as foolish as I please." With the words she ran from the room, but was back in an incredibly short time, gowned as Bizet's cigarette girl, a red rose in her black hair, castanets upon her fingers. Jadwin began the bolero. "Can you see me dance, and play at the same time?" "Yes, yes. Go on. How do you know anything about a Spanish dance?" "I learned it long ago. I know everything about anything I choose, to-night. Play, play it _fast_." She danced as though she would never tire, with the same force of passion that she had thrown into Athalie. Her yellow skirt was a flash of flame spurting from the floor, and her whole body seemed to move with the same wild, untamed spirit as a tongue of fire. The castanets snapped like the crackling of sparks; her black mantilla was a hovering cloud of smoke. She was incarnate flame, capricious and riotous, elusive and dazzling. Then suddenly she tossed the castanets far across the room and dropped upon the couch, panting and laughing. "There," she cried, "now I feel better. That had to come out. Come over here and sit by me. Now, maybe you'll admit that I can dance too." "You sure can," answered Jadwin, as she made a place for him among the cushions. "That was wonderful. But, at the same time, old girl, I wouldn't--wouldn't--" "Wouldn't what?" "Well, do too much of that. It's sort of over-wrought--a little, and unnatural. I like you best when you are your old self, quiet, and calm, and dignified. It's when you are quiet that you are at your best. I didn't know you had this streak in you. You are that excitable to-night!" "Let me be so then. It's myself, for the moment whatever it is. But now I'll be quiet. Now we'll talk. Have you had a hard day? Oh, and did your head bother you again?" "No, things were a little easier down town to-day. But that queer feeling in my head did come back as I was coming home--and my head aches a little now, besides." "Your head aches!" she exclaimed. "Let me do something for it. And I've been making it worse with all my foolishness." "No, no; that's all right," he assured her. "I tell you what we'll do. I'll lie down here a bit, and you play something for me. Something quiet. I get so tired down there in La Salle Street, Laura, you don't know." And while he stretched out at full length upon the couch, his wife, at the organ, played the music she knew he liked best--old songs, "Daisy Dean," "Lord Lovell," "When Stars Are in the Quiet Sky," and "Open Thy Lattice to Me." When at length she paused, he nodded his head with pleasure.