“And yet—­yet you would like to dance?”

“I don’t know——­” She hesitates, and suddenly looks up at him with eyes as full of sorrow as of mirth.  “At all events I know this," says she, “that I wish the band would not play such nice waltzes!”

Hardinge gives way to laughter, and presently she laughs too, but softly, and as if afraid of being heard, and as if too a little ashamed of herself.  Her color rises, a delicate warm color that renders her absolutely adorable.

“Shall I order them to stop?” asks Hardinge, laughing still, yet with something in his gaze that tells her he would forbid them to play if he could, if only to humor her.

“No!” says she, “and, after all,”—­philosophically—­“enjoyment is only a name.”

“That’s all!” says Hardinge, smiling.  “But a very good one.”

“Let us forget it,” with a little sigh, “and talk of something else, something pleasanter.”

“Than enjoyment?”

She gives way to his mood and laughs afresh.

“Ah! you have me there!” says she.

“I have not, indeed,” he returns quietly, and with meaning.  “Neither there, nor anywhere.”

He gets up suddenly, and going to her, bends over the chair on which she is sitting.

“We were talking of what?” asks she, with admirable courage, “of names, was it not?  An endless subject. My name now?  An absurd one surely.  Perpetua!  I don’t like Perpetua, do you?” She is evidently talking at random.

“I do indeed!” says Hardinge, promptly and fervently.  His tone accentuates his meaning.

“Oh, but so harsh, so unusual!”

“Unusual!  That in itself constitutes a charm.”

“I was going to add, however—­disagreeable.”

“Not that—­never that,” says Hardinge.

“You mean to say you really like Perpetua?” her large soft eyes opening with amazement.

“It is a poor word,” says he, his tone now very low.  “If I dared say that I adored ‘Perpetua,’ I should be——­”

“Oh, you laugh at me,” interrupts she with a little impatient gesture, “you know how crude, how strange, how——­”

“I don’t, indeed.  Why should you malign yourself like that?  You—­you—­who are——­”

He stops short, driven to silence by a look in the girl’s eye.

“What have I to do with it?  I did not christen myself,” says she.  There is perhaps a suspicion of hauteur in her tone.  “I am talking to you about my name. You understand that, don’t you?”—­the hauteur increasing.  “Do you know, of late I have often wished I was somebody else, because then I should have had a different one.”

Hardinge, at this point, valiantly refrains from a threadbare quotation.  Perhaps he is too far crushed to be able to remember it.

“Still it is charming,” says he, somewhat confusedly.

“It is absurd,” says Perpetua coldly.  There is evidently no pity in her.  And alas! when we think what that sweet feeling is akin to, on the highest authority, one’s hopes for Hardinge fall low.  He loses his head a little.