All that he had thought distasteful and incongruous in her were but accessories of her loveliness at that moment, in that light, in that atmosphere, in that strange assembly.

Even her full pink gauze dress, from which her fair young shoulders slipped as from a sunset cloud, seemed only the perfection of virginal simplicity; her girlish length of limb and the long curves of her neck and back were now the outlines of thorough breeding.

The absence of color in her usually fresh face had been replaced by a faint magnetic aurora that seemed to him half spiritual.
He could not take his eyes from her; he could not believe what he saw.
Yet that was Cressy McKinstry--his pupil! Had he ever really seen her?
Did he know her now?
Small wonder that all eyes were bent upon her, that a murmur of unspoken admiration, or still more intense hush of silence moved the people around him.

He glanced hurriedly at them, and was oddly relieved by this evident participation in his emotions.
She was dancing now, and with that same pale restraint and curious quiet that had affected him so strongly.

She had not even looked in his direction, yet he was aware by the same instinct that had at first possessed him that she knew he was present.