She felt, suddenly, a sense of uneasiness in being near him.

"Of course I have remembered you, Mr. Berkley," she said with composure. "Few men dance as well. It has been an agreeable memory to me."

"But you would not dance with me again."

"I—there were—you seemed perfectly contented to sit out—the rest—with me."

He considered the carpet attentively. Then looking up with quick, engaging smile:

"I want to ask you something. May I?"

She did not answer. As it had been from the first time she had ever seen him, so it was now with her; a confused sense of the necessity for caution in dealing with a man who had inspired in her such an unaccountable inclination to listen to what he chose to say.

"What is it you wish to ask?" she inquired pleasantly.

"It is this: are you really surprised that I came? Are you, in your heart?"

"Did I appear to be very much agitated? Or my heart, either, Mr. Berkley?" she asked with a careless laugh, conscious now of her quickening pulses. Outwardly calm, inwardly Irresolute, she faced him with a quiet smile of confidence.