Dora went in with Innes, as being the biggest there. I came in with the tail. We would change all that!
After dinner I made straight for the drawing-room. Something seemed to tell me that I had better make the running while I could. It was the pace which would win. Besides, the consciousness that I was once more in Dora's near neighbourhood had on me the same queer effect which it evidently had on Archie. I found her talking to the Whortleberry. Presently the millionairess went off with Mary Porteous. I had Dora to myself.
It was odd how the recognition of this fact gave me what positively amounted to a thrill. And yet, for a moment or two, neither of us spoke. She sat opening and shutting her fan. I sat and watched her performance. And when I did speak at last, my voice actually trembled.
"I have been thinking of what you said to me the other evening."
"What was that?"
"Have you forgotten?"
"Haven't you?"
"I could scarcely have been thinking of it if I had forgotten."
"What did I say?"
"You gave me courage."