"Would you be exceedingly angry if I were to ask you to dance?" I questioned, stealing surreptitiously a glance at her proudly averted face.

"Angry? Most assuredly not," in apparent surprise. "Yet I trust you will not ask me. I have been upon the floor only once to-night. I am not at all in the mood."

The words were not encouraging, yet they served to break the ice, and I was never easily daunted.

"If there were chairs here I should venture to ask even a greater favor--that you would consent to sit out this set with me."

She turned slightly, lifted her eyes inquiringly to mine, and her face lightened.

"No doubt we might discover seats without difficulty, in the anteroom," she answered, indicating the direction by a glance. "There do not appear to be many 'sitters-out' at this ball, and the few who do are not crowded."

If the pendulum of hope and despair swings one way, the unalterable laws of mental gravitation compel it to go just as far the other, and although I do not remember uttering so much as a word while we traversed the crowded floor and gained entrance to the smaller room beyond, yet my heart was singing a song of the deepest hope. The apartment contained, as she prophesied, but few occupants, and I conducted her to the farther end of it, where we found a comfortable divan and no troublesome neighbors.