"You will accept? You think I did well in my—shopping?"
Boswell stood in the doorway, just where a long path of late June sunlight struck across the room. For the girl, looking mutely at him with shining eyes, he was transfigured, translated. Only the great, tender soul was visible to her; the unasking, the kind spirit. Moved by a sudden impulse, Priscilla rose to her feet and walked to him with outstretched hands; when she reached him he took her hands in his and smiled up at her.
"I—I accept," she whispered with a break in her voice. "You have made me—happier than I have ever been in my life!"
Boswell drew her hands to his lips and kissed them.
"And you will come and see me in them"—Priscilla turned her eyes to the box—"when I—dance?"
"You are to dance?"
"We are all to dance."
"I have not seen you dance for many a day. If you dance as you once did there will be only you dancing. Yes, I will come."
And Boswell went. The exercises were held in the little chapel. From his far corner he watched the young women, in uniforms of spotless white, file to the platform for their diplomas. They all merged, for him, into one—a tall, lithe creature with burnished hair, coppery and fine, and an exalted face. Later, from behind the mass of palms and ferns in the dancing hall, he saw only one girl—a girl in white with the tints of the thistle flower matching the deep eyes.
And Priscilla danced. Some one, a young doctor, asked her, and fortunately for him he was a master hand at following. After a moment of surprise, tinged with excited determination, he found himself, with his brilliant partner, the centre of attraction.