"You don't really want to! You wouldn't have thought of it, if I hadn't said anything," she stammered.
"I've often thought of it," he maintained quietly. "If the truth must be told, I'm very fond of music, so it will be a kindness if you will let me pretend that I'm only going to please you."
There was a little silence, then Marie slipped her hand into his with a long sigh of relief.
"Oh, you are a dear," she said, and fled away before he could answer.
She went up to her own room and hurried with her dressing. She did not want to go to the concert in the very least. It had cost her a great deal to refuse Chris' offer of that moonlit walk, but in her heart she knew that he had only suggested it as reparation for his forgetfulness of last night, and her pride would not allow her to accept.
If he had wished to go with her he would not have forgotten. She knew Chris well enough to know that he never forgot a thing that he wished to remember, and there was a little choking lump of misery in her throat as she hurriedly changed her frock.
Chris was very punctilious about dressing for dinner. It was one of his pet snobberies, so Feathers declared, for Feathers himself had a fine disregard of appearances and of what people thought.
But to-night even he struggled into a dinner jacket, and half- strangled himself in a high collar in honor of Marie. At dinner Chris chaffed him mercilessly across the space that divided their tables.
"You'll be putting brilliantine on your hair next," he said. "Not that it would be much use!" he added dryly.
"I think his hair looks very nice," said Marie Celeste. She did not think so, but she was so grateful to him for haying rushed into the breach for her to-night that she looked upon him through rose- tinted glasses.