Barbara."

"Don't call me Barbara," I snapped. "I know perfectly well what you think of me, and I——"

"I think you are wonderful," he said. "Words fail me when I try to tell you what I am thinking. You've saved the cotillion for me, haven't you? If not, I'm going to claim it anyhow. IT IS MY RIGHT."

He said it in the most determined manner, as if everything was settled. I felt like a rat in a trap, and Carter, watching from a corner, looked exactly like a cat. If he had taken his hand in its white glove and washed his face with it, I would hardly have been surprised.

The music stopped, and somebody claimed me for the next. Jane came up, too, and clutched my arm.

"You lucky thing!" she said. "He's perfectly handsome. And oh, Bab, he's wild about you. I can see it in his eyes."

"Don't pinch, Jane," I said coldly. "And don't rave. He's an idiot."

She looked at me with her mouth open.

"Well, if you don't want him, pass him on to me," she said, and walked away.

It was too silly, after everything that had happened, to dance the next dance with Willie Graham, who is still in knickerbockers, and a full head shorter than I am. But that's the way with a Party for the school crowd, as I've said before. They ask all ages, from perambulators up, and of course the little boys all want to dance with the older girls. It is deadly stupid.

But H seemed to be having a good time. He danced a lot with Jane, who is a wretched dancer, with no sense of time whatever. Jane is not pretty, but she has nice eyes, and I am not afraid, second cousin once removed or no second cousin once removed, to say she used them.

Altogether, it was a terrible evening. I danced three dances out of four with knickerbockers, and one with old Mr. Adams, who is fat and rotates his partner at the corners by swinging her on his waistcoat. Carter did not dance at all, and every time I tried to speak to him he was taking a crowd of the little girls to the fruit-punch bowl.

I determined to have things out with H during the cotillion, and tell him that I would never marry him, that I would die first. But I was favored a great deal, and when we did have a chance the music was making such a noise that I would have had to shout. Our chairs were next to the band.

But at last we had a minute, and I went out to the verandah, which was closed in with awnings. He had to follow, of course, and I turned and faced him.

"Now" I said, "this has got to stop."

"I don't understand you, Bab."

"You do, perfectly well," I stormed. "I can't stand it. I am going crazy."

"Oh," he said slowly. "I see. I've been dancing too much with the little girl with the eyes! Honestly, Bab, I was only doing it to disarm suspicion. MY EVERY THOUGHT IS OF YOU."

"I mean," I said, as firmly as I could, "that this whole thing has got to stop. I can't stand it."

"Am I to understand," he said solemnly, "that you intend to end everything?"

I felt perfectly wild and helpless.

"After that Letter!" he went on. "After that sweet Letter! You said, you know, that you were mad to see me, and that—it is almost too sacred to repeat, even to YOU—that you would always love me. After that Confession I refuse to agree that all is over. It can NEVER be over."

"I daresay I am losing my mind," I said. "It all sounds perfectly natural. But it doesn't mean anything. There CAN'T be any Harold Valentine; because I made him up. But there is, so there must be. And I am going crazy."

"Look here," he stormed, suddenly quite raving, and throwing out his right hand. It would have been terribly dramatic, only he had a glass of punch in it. "I am not going to be played with. And you are not going to jilt me without a reason. Do you mean to deny everything? Are you going to say, for instance, that I never sent you any violets? Or gave you my Photograph, with an—er—touching inscription on it?" Then, appealingly, "You can't mean to deny that Photograph, Bab!"

And then that lanky wretch of an Eddie Perkins brought me a toy balloon, and I had to dance, with my heart crushed.

Nevertheless, I ate a fair supper. I felt that I needed Strength. It was quite a grown-up supper, with bullion and creamed chicken and baked ham and sandwiches, among other things. But of course they had to show it was a 'kid' party, after all. For instead of coffee we had milk.

Milk! When I was going through a tragedy. For if it is not a tragedy to be engaged to a man one never saw before, what is it?

All through the refreshments I could feel that his eyes were on me. And I hated him. It was all well enough for Jane to say he was handsome. She wasn't going to have to marry him. I detest dimples in chins. I always have. And anybody could see that it was his first mustache, and soft, and that he took it round like a mother pushing a new baby in a perambulator. It was sickening.

I left just after supper. He did not see me when I went upstairs, but he had missed me, for when Hannah and I came down, he was at the door, waiting. Hannah was loaded down with silly favors, and lagged behind, which gave him a chance to speak to me. I eyed him coldly and tried to pass him, but I had no chance.

"I'll see you tomorrow, DEAREST," he whispered.

"Not if I can help it," I said, looking straight ahead. Hannah had dropped a stocking—not her own. One of the Christmas favors—and was fumbling about for it.

"You are tired and unnerved to-night, Bab. When I have seen your father tomorrow, and talked to him——"

"Don't you dare to see my father."

"——and when he has agreed to what I propose," he went on, without paying any attention to what I had said, "you will be calmer. We can plan things."

Hannah came puffing up then, and he helped us into the motor. He was very careful to see that we were covered with the robes, and he tucked Hannah's feet in. She was awfully flattered. Old Fool! And she babbled about him until I wanted to slap her.

"He's a nice young man. Miss Bab," she said. "That is, if he's the One. And he has nice manners. So considerate. Many a party I've taken your sister to, and never before——"

"I wish you'd shut up, Hannah," I said. "He's a pig, and I hate him."

She sulked after that, and helped me out of my things at home without a word. When I was in bed, however, and she was hanging up my clothes, she said:

"I don't know what's got into you, Miss Barbara. You are that cross that there's no living with you."

"Oh, go away," I said.

"And what's more," she added, "I don't know but what your mother ought to know about these goings on. You're only a little girl, with all your high and mightiness, and there's going to be no scandal in this family if I can help it."

I put the bedclothes over my head, and she went out.

But of course I could not sleep. Sis was not home yet, or mother, and I went into Sis's room and got a novel from her table. It was the story of a woman who had married a man in a hurry, and without really loving him, and when she had been married a year, and hated the very way her husband drank his coffee and cut the ends off his cigars, she found some one she really loved with her whole heart. And it was too late. But she wrote him one letter, the other man, you know, and it caused a lot of trouble. So she said—I remember the very words—

"Half the troubles in the world are caused by letters. Emotions are changeable things"—this was after she had found that she really loved her husband after all, but he had had to shoot himself before she found it out, although not fatally—"but the written word does not change. It remains always, embodying a dead truth and giving it apparent life. No woman should ever put her thoughts on paper."

She got the letter back, but she had to steal it. And it turned out that the other man had really only wanted her money all the time.

That story was a real illumination to me. I shall have a great deal of money when I am of age,