I imagine Phillida had the vaguest ideas of what such places were like. When we were settled at a table in a general blaze of pink lights, beside a fountain that ran colored water, I regarded her humorously. But she seemed quite contented with her surroundings, looking about her with an air I can best describe as grave excitement. At this hour, the room was not half filled, and the jazz orchestra had withdrawn to prepare for a hard night's work. After I had ordered our dinner, I glanced up to see her fingers busied loosening the severe lines of her brushed back hair. "Everyone here looks so nice," she said wistfully. "I wish my hair did shine and cuddle around my face like those women's does. Do--do I look queer, Cousin? You are looking at me so----?" "I was thinking what pretty eyes you have." Her pale face flushed. "Really?" "Most truthfully. As for the hair, isn't that a matter of bottled polish and hairdressers? But you remind me of a question for you. Isn't a braid of hair this wide," I laid off the dimensions on the table, "this long, and thick, a good deal for a woman to own?" "Show me again." I obeyed, while she leaned forward to observe. "Not one girl in a hundred has so much," she pronounced judgment. "Who is she? Probably it isn't all her own, anyhow!" "It is not now, but it was," I said remorsefully. "How could you tell? Did you measure it?"--with sarcasm. "Do you remember the maxim we used to write in copybooks? 'Measure a thousand times, and cut once?' One has to be cautious!" "I cut it first, and then measured." "What? Tell me." At last she was interested and amused. There was no reason why I should not tell her of my midnight adventure. We never repeated one another's little confidences. She listened, with many comments and exclamations, to the story of the unseen lady, the legend of the fair witch, the dagger that was a paper-knife by day and the severed tresses. She did not hear of the singular nightmare or hallucination that had been my second visitor. My reason had accounted for the experience and dismissed it. Some other part of myself avoided the memory with that deep, unreasoning sense of horror sometimes left by a morbid dream. The dinner crowd had flowed in while we ate and talked. A burst of applause aroused me to this fact and the commencement of the first show of the evening. The orchestra had taken their places. "They will hardly begin with their best act," I remarked, surprised by Phillida's convulsive start and rapt intentness upon the stretch of ice that formed the exhibition floor. "Your ballet on skates probably will come later." "I did not come to see the ballet," she answered, her voice low. "No? What, then?" "A--man I know?" Once when I was a little fellow, I raced headlong into the low-swinging branch of a tree, the bough striking me across the forehead so that I was bowled over backward amid a shower of apples. I felt a twin sensation, now. "Here, Phillida?" "Yes."