this great occasion, she fell to longing to go home to him--to belong to Myrtle Street and obscurity again, just as he did, and because he did. Why should she be listening to the Austrian band, eating ices and strawberries, rustling to and fro amongst the flowers and fine ladies, flaunting herself in this dazzling crowd of rich and idle people, while he plodded at his desk or smoked a lonely pipe on his balcony, out of it all, and with nothing to cheer him? Then the memory of their estrangement, and how it had come about, and how little chance there seemed now of any return to old relations and those blessed opportunities that she had so perversely thrown away, wrought upon her high-strung nerves, and inspired her with a kind of heroism of despair. Poor, thin-skinned Patty! She was sensitive to circumstances to a degree that almost merited the term "morbid," which is so convenient as a description of people of that sort. A ray of sunshine would light up the whole world, and show her her own pathway in it, shining into the farthest future with a divine effulgence of happiness and success; and the patter of rain upon the window on a dark day could beat down hope and discourage effort as effectually as if its natural mission were to bring misfortune. At one moment she would be inflated with a proud belief in herself and her own value and dignity, that gave her the strength of a giant to be and do and suffer; and then, at some little touch of failure, some discovery that she was mortal and a woman liable to blunder, as were other women, she would collapse into nothing and fling herself into the abysses of shame and self-condemnation as a worthless and useless thing. When this happened, her only chance of rescue and restoration in her own esteem was to do penance in some striking shape--to prove herself to herself as having some genuineness of moral substance in her, though it were only to own honestly how little it was. It was above all things necessary to her to have her own good opinion; what others thought of her was comparatively of no consequence. She had been dancing for some time before the intercourse with Mr. Smith, that so gratified Mrs. Duff-Scott, set in. The portly widower found her fanning herself on a sofa in the neighbourhood of her chaperon, for the moment unattended by cavaliers; and, approaching her with one of the frequent little plates and spoons that were handed about, invited her favour through the medium of three colossal strawberries veiled in sugar and cream. "I am so grieved that I am not a dancing man," he sighed as she refused his offering on the ground that she had already eaten strawberries twice; "I would ask leave to inscribe my humble name on your programme, Miss Patty." "I don't see anything to grieve about," she replied, "in not being a dancing man. I am sure I don't want to dance. And you may inscribe your name on my programme and welcome"--holding it out to him. "It will keep other people from doing it."