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"Suit yourself. I'm your hostess and at your disposal, within limits. However, I have other guests and I'll have to go back to them after this piece. Conventionality is my synonym."

"Are you going to dance with that Sharp man again?" growled Abner, who found himself in a very bad humour indeed.

"I don't know. Why?" she glanced up at him sidewise.

"Suppose we go back in there and dance together?" suggested Abner, on an impulse.

"Oh, no, dear, you won't do to dance in polite society for several generations yet to come. Now, your great-great-grandson may be able to dance with a lady in a perfectly gentlemanly manner, like Buck."

For some reason this little speech whisked away Abner's dourness. He grinned and patted Adelaide's shoulder and this tempted him to another embrace, but she moved away.

"No, that's enough. I supposed the village would think this much perfectly awful, but it's necessary. How can you tell whether a person really attracts you or not?—You have to try it—that's what hugging and kissing are for. It's a try-out for passion. Folks make a great hullabaloo about passion, Abner, how wicked it is, but if you haven't got it it's S O S at the matrimonial altar. You can complain of petting parties all you please, Abner, but they are bound to save hundreds of divorces in the end. My room mate and I talked that over in the seminary."

Adelaide sighed and sat for a few moments following some thought. "Of course, dancing is a formal way of petting. That's why jazz has such a hold on everybody. I think young folks instinctively want to be frank and open in their love-making, Abner, but the old folks don't like to be reminded that they are old, so they make a great sin out of youth—that's what my room mate said."

She seemed so pensive and at sea that Abner was moved to tenderness. He took her hand and gently quoted the hills.

"Don't you think love comes from God?"