Part 16 (1/2)

”That's very beautiful and self-sacrificing of you. But how can you keep up the pace?”

”I can't, much longer. I'm almost all in. The season is nearly over, though. If everything goes right, Dad and I will get out of town--to the other side, perhaps. Then I can sleep all the way across. If he can't go abroad, we'll be alone anyway, since everybody else will leave town.

Then I can catch up on sleep.”

”You must be made of iron,” he said.

”Am I so heavy as all that?”

”Oh, no, no, you are--you are--” But he could not say anything without saying too much. She saved the day by a change of subject.

”And I stared right at you, and didn't know you?”

”Why should you? It was stupid of me to expect you to remember me. But I did, and--when you didn't, I was crushed.”

”Of course you were,” she crooned. ”I always want to murder anybody who forgets me.”

”Surely that can't happen often? How could any one forget You?”

It was perfectly sincere, yet it sounded like the b.u.mptious praise of a yokel. She raised her eyelids and reproved him.

”That's pretty rough work for a West-Pointer. Rub it out and do it over again.”

Again he lost the rhythm, and suffered agonies of confusion in recovering it. But the tango music put him on his feet again. How could he be humble to that uppish, vainglorious tune, that toreador pomposity?

Persis herself was like a pouter pigeon strutting and preening her high breast. All the dancers on the floor were proclaiming their grandeur, playing the peac.o.c.k.

Forbes grew consequential, too, as he and Persis marched haughtily forward shoulder to shoulder, and outer hands clasped, then paused for a kick, whirled on their heels, and retraced their steps with the high knee-action of thoroughbreds winning a blue ribbon.

Then each hopped awhile on one foot, the other foot kicking between the partner's knees. Then they dipped to the floor. As he swept her back to her full height, the music turned sly and sarcastic. It gave an unreal color to his words.

”Will you pardon me one question?”

”Probably not. What is it?”

”Didn't you wear this same hat yesterday?”

Her head came up with a glare. ”Isn't that a rather catty remark for a man to make?”

”Oh, I didn't mean it that way,” he faltered. ”It's a beautiful hat.”

”No hat is beautiful two days in succession. It's unkind of you, though, to notice it, and rub it in.”

”For heaven's sake, don't take it that way. I--I followed this hat of yours for miles and miles yesterday.”

”You followed this hat?”

”Yes.”

They danced, marched, countermarched, pirouetted, in a pink mist. And he told her in his courtly way, with his Southern fervor, how he had been captivated by the white plume, and the shoulder and arm, and the foot; how vainly he had tried to overtake her for at least a fleeting survey.