"That I cannot answer. Perhaps their feet are too big; but you must go back to her all the same, whether she can dance or not."
"Not until you answer me. You know you are keeping me on hot coals, Berenice. You know I love you."
"I have answered you already," she replied, hurriedly but firmly. "Why must you make me say it again? I don't love you, and that is reason enough why you shouldn't care for me."
"It isn't any reason at all. I should be fond of you anyway. Why, even if you made a guy of me before everybody as you did to-night of that clerical thing"--
"Stop!" Berenice interrupted, her color rising and her eyes shining. "I will not have you speak of Mr. Wynne in that way. What I did was bad enough."
"Berenice," demanded Stanford, regarding her keenly, "do you mean to marry _him_?"
"You have no right to ask me whom I mean to marry! I am not going to marry you, at least!"
"A clergyman. A man in petticoats! Well, I must say"--
She drew herself up to her full height, looking at him with anger and excitement in her heart so great that they seemed to choke her.
"Do you see this?" she asked, holding up the little mask dangling from her finger. "I fastened this to his cassock to-night. I insulted him in the sight of everybody. Does that look as if"--
"Is that the same mask?" broke in Stanford. "You begged it of me afterward!"
She could not command her voice to reply. Shame, grief, indignation, struggled in her heart; yet her strongest conscious feeling was a determination that the tears in her eyes should not fall. She slipped past him, and moved toward the ball-room. With a quick step he gained her side.
"I beg your pardon," he said contritely. "I didn't mean to hurt you. You used to be nice to me, but lately"--
She mastered herself by a strong effort. She was fully aware that there were too many curious eyes about her to make any demonstration safe.
"Let me take your arm," she answered. "Folks are watching. We need not make a spectacle of ourselves. I haven't meant to treat you badly. A girl never knows how a man is going to take things, and I only meant to be pleasant. As soon as you began to show that you were in earnest"--
She was so conscious that her words were not entirely frank that she instinctively hesitated.