“You don’t like it, Pauline?” said Richard, looking at me.

“Like it!” I said, impatiently.  “Why, I don’t know how; who did I ever have to dance with in Varick-street?  Ann Coddle or old Peter?  And Uncle Leonard never thought of such a thing as sending me to school.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before, and we wouldn’t have bothered about this stupid dance,” said Kilian; but I think he didn’t mean it, for he enjoyed dancing very much.

Richard had to go away, for though he hated it, he was needed, as they had not gentlemen enough.

The one or two persons who had been introduced to me, on going to join the dance, also expressed regret.  Even Mrs. Hollenbeck came up, and said how sorry she was:  she had supposed I danced.

But they all went away, and I was left by one of the furthest windows with a tiresome old man, who didn’t dance either, because his legs weren’t strong enough, and who talked and talked till I asked him not to; which he didn’t seem to like.  But to have to talk, with the noise of the music, and the stir, of the dancing, and the whirl that is always going on in such a room, is penance.  I told him it made my head ache, and besides I couldn’t hear, and so at last he went away, and I was left alone.

Sometimes in pauses of the dance Richard came up to me, and sometimes Kilian; but it had the effect of making me more uncomfortable, for it made everybody turn and look at me.  Bye and bye I stole away and went on the piazza, and looked in where no one could see me.  I could not go away entirely, for I was fascinated by the dance.  I longed so to be dancing, and had such bitter feelings because I never had been taught.  After I left the room, I could see Richard was uncomfortable; he looked often at the door, and was not very attentive to his partner.  No one else seemed to miss me.  Mr. Langenau talked constantly to Miss Lowder, with whom he had been dancing, and never looked once toward where I had been sitting.  A long time after, when they had been dancing—­hours it seemed to me—­Miss Lowder seemed to feel faint or tired, and Mr. Langenau came out with her, and took her up-stairs to the dressing-room.

Ashamed to be seen looking in at the window, I ran into the library and sat down.  There was a student’s lamp upon the table, but the room had no other light.  I sat leaning back in a large chair by the table, with my bouquet in my lap, buttoning and unbuttoning absently my long white gloves.  In a moment I heard Mr. Langenau come down-stairs alone:  he had left Miss Lowder in the dressing-room to rest there:  he came directly toward the library.

He came half-way in the door, then paused.  “May I speak to you?” he said slowly, fixing his eyes on mine.  “I seem to be the only one who is forbidden, of those who have offended you and of those who have not.”

“No one has said what you have,” I said very faintly.

In an instant he was standing beside me, with one hand resting on the table.