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<h2>CHAPTER SIX</h2> "Our dance." With a swift little movement the girl turned a glowing face to the man standing before her. Flushed with dancing, keyed high in the pleasure and triumphs of the evening, she turned the same radiant face to Stuart Williams as he claimed their dance that she would have turned to almost anyone claiming a dance. It was something that came to life in the man's eyes as he looked down into her flushed face, meeting her happy, shining eyes, that arrested the flashing, impersonal smile of an instant before and underneath that impersonal gladness of youth there was a faint flutter of self. He was of the "older crowd;" it happened that she had never danced with him before. He was a better dancer than the boys of her own set, but somehow that old impersonal joy in dancing was a lesser thing now than the sense of dancing with this man. "That was worth coming for," he said quietly, when the dance and the encore to it were over and they found themselves by one of the doors opening out on the balcony. She looked up with a smile. It was a smile curiously touched with shyness. He saw the color wavering in her sensitive, delicate face. Then he asked lightly: "Shall we see what's being dispensed from this punch-bowl?" With their ice, they stood looking out into the moonlight over a wide stretch of meadow to far hills. "A fine night to ride over the hills and far away," he laughed at last, his voice lingering a little on the fancy. She only laughed a little in reply, looking off there toward over the hills and far away. Watching her, he wondered why he had never thought anything much about her before. He would have said that Ruth Holland was one of the nice attractive girls of the town, and beyond that could have said little about her. He watched the flow of her slender neck into her firm delicate little chin, the lovely corners of her mouth where feeling lurked. The fancy came to him that she had not settled into flesh the way most people did, that she was not fixed by it. He puzzled for the word he wanted for her, then got it—luminous was what she was; he felt a considerable satisfaction in having found that word. "Seems to me you and Edith Lawrence grew up in a terrible hurry," he began in a slow, teasing manner. "Just a day or two ago you were youngsters racing around with flying pigtails, and now here you are—all these poor young chaps—and all us poor old ones—fighting for dances with you. What made you hurry so?" he laughed. The coquette in most normal girls of twenty rose like a little imp up through her dreaming of over the hills and far away. "Why, I don't know," she said, demurely; "perhaps I was hurrying to catch up with someone." His older to younger person manner fell away, leaving the man delighting in the girl, a delightfully daring girl it seemed she was, for all that look of fine things he had felt in her just a moment before. He grew newly puzzled about her, and interested in the puzzle. "Would you like to have that someone stand still long enough to give you a good start?" he asked, zestful for following. But she could not go on with it. She was not used to saying daring things to "older men." She was a little appalled at what she had done—saying a thing like that to a man who was married; and yet just a little triumphant in her own audacity, and the way she had been able to make him feel she was something a long way removed from a little girl with flying pigtails. "I really have been grown up for quite a while," she said, suddenly grave. He did not try to bring her back to the other mood,—that astonishing little flare of audacity; he was watching her changing face, like her voice it was sweetly grave. The music had begun again—this time a waltz. A light hand upon her arm, he directed her back towards the dancing floor. "I have this taken," she objected hesitatingly. "This is an extra," he said. She felt sure that it was not; she knew she ought to object, that it was not right to be treating one of the boys of her own crowd that way. But that consciousness of what she ought to be doing fell back—pale, impotent—before the thing she wanted to do.... They were silent for a little time after; without commenting on doing so, they returned to their place outside. "See?" she said presently, "the moon has found another hill. That wasn't there when we were here before." "And beyond that are more hills," he said, "that we don't see even yet." "I suppose," she laughed, "that it's not knowing where we would get makes over the hills and far away—fun." "Well, anything rather than standing still." He said it under his breath, more to himself than to her. But it was to her he added, teasingly and a little lingeringly: "Unless, of course, one were waiting for someone to catch up with one." She smiled without turning to him; watching her, the thought found its way up through the proprieties of his mind that it would be worth waiting a long time if, after the wait, one could go over the hills and far away with a girl through whom life glowed as he could see it glowed in this girl; no, not with a girl like this—boldly, humorously and a little tenderly he amended in his mind—but with this girl. She wheeled about. "I must go back," she said abruptly. "This dance is with Will Blair—I must go back. I'll have a hard enough time," she laughed, a little nervously, "making it right with Louis Stephens." "I'll tell him I heard it was an extra," he said. She halted, looking up at him. "Did you hear that!" she demanded. He seemed about to say some light thing, but that died away. "I wanted the dance," was his quiet reply. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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