"Oh, no,"—slowly. "It was with you I danced the last waltz, I think."
"No. The last polka." He is even more piqued now. "It has slipped your memory; yet there are some things one never forgets."
"Yes," says Miss Broughton, with a suppressed sigh; "but those are unhappy things. Why think of them now? Let us dance again, and forget while we can."
"You mistake me," says Dorian, hastily. "I thought of nothing unhappy. I thought of you. I shall never forget this night."
"Ah, neither shall I!" says Miss Broughton, very earnestly indeed. By an artificial observer, it might be thought somewhat sentimentally.
"Do you mean that?" says Dorian, hopefully, if curiously. "Am I to understand you mean to keep this particular ball forever in mind?"
"You may, indeed."
"But why?"—with much animation, and an over-increasing show of hope.
"Because it is my first," says Miss Broughton, confidentially, with a little quick-drawn sigh of utter content, and a soft, if rather too general, smile.
"I see,"—disappointedly. "Is that your reason? What a curious one!"