IV

She was still quite angry when she came out of the dressing-room and
crossed the intervening parlor of politeness that opened onto the
hall--angry not so much at the actual happening which was, after all,
the merest commonplace of her social existence, but because it had
occurred on this particular night. She had no quarrel with herself.
She had acted with that correct mixture of dignity and reticent pity
which she always employed. She had succinctly and deftly snubbed him.

It had happened when their taxi was leaving the Biltmore--hadn't gone
half a block. He had lifted his right arm awkwardly--she was on his
right side--and attempted to settle it snugly around the crimson
fur-trimmed opera cloak she wore. This in itself had been a mistake.
It was inevitably more graceful for a young man attempting to embrace
a young lady of whose acquiescence he was not certain, to first put
his far arm around her. It avoided that awkward movement of raising
the near arm.

His second _faux pas_ was unconscious. She had spent the
afternoon at the hairdresser's; the idea of any calamity overtaking
her hair was extremely repugnant--yet as Peter made his unfortunate
attempt the point of his elbow had just faintly brushed it. That was
his second _faux pas_. Two were quite enough.

He had begun to murmur. At the first murmur she had decided that he
was nothing but a college boy--Edith was twenty-two, and anyhow, this
dance, first of its kind since the war, was reminding her, with the
accelerating rhythm of its associations, of something else--of another
dance and another man, a man for whom her feelings had been little