“When you’ve realised that,” returned Laura, “you’ve just begun to understand me.”

Never had he seen her gayer. Her vivacity was bewildering.

“I wish,” she cried, all at once, “I wish I had dressed as Carmen, and I would have danced for you. Oh, and you could have played the air for me on the organ. I have the costume upstairs now. Wait! I will, I will! Sit right where you are⁠—no, fix the attachment to the organ while I’m gone. Oh, be gay with me tonight,” she cried, throwing her arms around him. “This is my night, isn’t it? And I am to be just as foolish as I please.”

With the words she ran from the room, but was back in an incredibly short time, gowned as Bizet’s cigarette girl, a red rose in her black hair, castanets upon her fingers.

Jadwin began the bolero.

“Can you see me dance, and play at the same time?”