The house door was still ajar.

She pushed it back, slipped inside, caught her breath and listened.

Then she closed the door softly behind her, and with that little act of attempted secrecy realised that she was now a rebel, that things could never be, for her, the same again as they had been a quarter of an hour ago.

That glittering crowd, the lamps, the smells, the sounds, had concentrated themselves into a little fiery charm that held her heart within a flaming circle.

She felt the most audacious creature in the world--and also the most ignorant.