“Let us go, if you want to very much,” he said.

“Really, we had better not.”

“Do you want to? very badly?” he asked again.

I said nothing.

“Society in itself is no great harm,” he went on; “but unsatisfied social aspirations are a bad and ugly business. We must certainly accept, and we will.”

“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I never in my life longed for anything as much as I do for this ball.”