What had she been afraid of in him?
She ventured to glance around, and, encountering a warmly personal interest in his gaze, instantly assumed that cold, blank, virginal mask which the majority of young girls discard at her age.
However, her long-checked growth in the arts of womanhood had already recommenced.

She had been growing fast, feverishly, and was just now passing that period where the desire for masculine admiration innocently rules all else, but where the discovery of it chills and constrains.
She passed it at that moment.

The next time their glances met she smiled a little.

A new epoch in her life had begun.
"Where are you taking me ?" she asked.

"Are we not going to dance ?" "I thought we might sit out a dance or two in the conservatory--one or two----" "One," she said decidedly.