“You do it so well,” said the little dark thing breathlessly.
“Do I?” murmured Bob, thinking of a stately young goddess, now tangoing with another fellow.
“Don’t you adore it?” went on the little dark thing, nestling as close as was conventional and proper.
“I might,” observed Bob. That was almost as bad as the dog question. He trusted the matter would end there.
She giggled happily. “Maybe you disapprove of modern dancing, Mr. Bennett?”
“That depends,” said Bob gloomily. He meant it depended upon who was “doing the modern” with the object of your fondest affections. If you yourself were engaged in the arduous pastime with said object, you would, naturally harbor no particular objections against said modern tendencies, but if you weren’t? —
Bob tangoed more swiftly. His thoughts were so bitter he wanted to run away from them. The irony of gliding rhythmically and poetically in seeming joyous abandon of movement when his heart weighed a ton! If that heaviness of heart were communicated to his legs, they would in reality be as heavy as those of a deep-sea diver, weighted down for a ten-fathom plunge.
And in thus trying to run away from his thoughts Bob whirled the little dark thing quite madly. He couldn’t dance ungracefully if he tried and the little dark thing had a soul for rhythm. It was as if he were trying to run away with her. He fairly took away her breath. She was a panting little dark thing on his broad breast now, but she didn’t ask him to stop. The music-box ceased to be musical and that brought them to a stop. The eyes of the little dark thing – her name was Dolly – sparkled, and she gazed up at Bob with the respect one of her tender and impressionable years has for a masculine whirlwind.
“You quite sweep one off one’s feet, Mr. Bennett,” she managed to ejaculate.
At that moment Miss Gwendoline passed, a divine bud glowing on either proud cheek. She caught the remark and looked at the maker of it. She noted the sparkle in the eyes. The little dark thing was a wonder with the men. She seemed to possess the knack – only second to Miss Gwendoline, in that line – of converting them into “trailers.” Miss Gwendoline, though, never tried to attain this result. Men became her trailers without any effort on her part, while the little dark thing had to exert herself, but it was agreeable work. She made Bob a trailer now, temporarily. Miss Gwendoline turned her head slightly, with a gleam of surprise to watch him trail. She had noticed that Bob had danced with irresistible and almost pagan abandon. That argued enjoyment.
The little dark thing would “come in” ultimately for hundreds of belching chimneys and glowing furnaces and noisy factories – quite a snug if cacophonous legacy! – and Miss Gwendoline had only that day heard rumors that Bob’s governor had fallen down and hurt himself on the “street.” She, Miss Gwendoline, had not attached much importance to those rumors. People were always having little mishaps in the “street,” and then bobbing up richer than ever.
But now that rumor recurred to her more vividly in the light of Bob’s trailing performance and the mad abandon of his tangoing. Of course, all men are gamblers, or fortune-hunters, or something equally reprehensible, at heart! Tendency of a cynical, selfish and money-grabbing age! Miss Gwendoline was no moralist but she had lived in a wise set, where people keep their eyes open and weigh things for just what they are. Naturally a young man whose governor has gone on the rocks (though only temporarily, perhaps), might think that belching chimneys, though somewhat splotchy on the horizon and unpicturesque to the eye, might be acceptable, in a first-aid-to-the-injured sense. But Bob as a plain, ordinary fortune-hunter? – Somehow the role did not fit him.
Besides, a fortune-hunter would not bruskly and unceremoniously have refused her invitation to ride in the trap. And at the recollection of that affront, Miss Gwendoline’s violet eyes again gleamed, until for sparkles they out-matched those of the little dark thing. However, she held herself too high to be really resentful. It was impossible she should resent anything so incomprehensible, she told herself. That would lend dignity to the offense. Therefore she could only be mildly amused by it. This was, no doubt, a properly lofty attitude, but was it a genuine one? Was she not actually at heart, deeply resentful and dreadfully offended? Pride being one of her marked characteristics, she demanded a great deal and would not accept a little.
The sparkles died from the hard violet eyes. A more tentative expression replaced that other look as her glance now passed meditatively over the dark little thing. The latter had certainly a piquant bizarre attraction. She looked as if she could be very intense, though she was of that clinging-vine variety of young woman. She wore one of those tango gowns which was odd, outre and a bit daring. It went with her personality. At the same time her innocent expression seemed a mute, almost pathetic little appeal to you not to think it too daring.
As Miss Gerald studied the young lady, albeit without seeming to do so and holding her own in a sprightly tango kind of talk, another thought flashed into her mind. Bob might be genuinely and sentimentally smitten. Why not? Men frequently fell in love with the little dark thing, and afterward some of them said she had a “good deal of temperament.” Bob might be on a temperament-investigating quest. At any rate, it was all one to Miss Gerald. Life was a comedy. N’est-ce-pas? What was it Balzac called it? La Comedie Humaine.
Meanwhile, other eyes than Miss Gerald’s were bent upon luckless Bob. Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence looked as if they would like to have a word with him. Mrs. Dan even maneuvered in his direction at the conclusion of the dance while Bob watched her with ill-concealed apprehension. He detected, also, an uncanny interest in Mrs. Clarence’s eyes as that masterful lady eyed him and Mrs. Dan from a distance. Mrs. Dan almost got him when – the saints be praised! – Mrs. Ralston, herself, tripped blithely up and annexed him. For the moment he was safe, but only for the moment.
A reckless desire to end it all surged through Bob’s inmost being. If only his hostess would say something demanding an answer that would incur such disapprobation on her part, he would feel impelled, in the natural order of events, to hasten his departure. Maybe then (and he thrilled at the thought), she might even intimate in her chilliest manner that his immediate departure would be the logical sequence of some truthful spasm she, herself, had forced from him? He couldn’t talk French to Mrs. Ralston now; he was in honor bound not to. He would have to speak right up in the King’s English – or Uncle Sam’s American.
Of course, such a consummation – Bob’s being practically forced to take his departure – was extremely unpleasant and awful to contemplate, yet worse things could happen than that – a whole string of them, one right after another!
However, he had no such luck as to be ordered forthwith off the premises. He didn’t offend Mrs. Ralston at all. That lady was very nice to him (or otherwise, from Bob’s present view-point) and did most of the talking herself. Perhaps she considered that compliment (?) Bob had bestowed upon her at the Waldorf sufficient to excuse him for a while from further undue efforts at flattery. At any rate, she didn’t seem to take it amiss that Bob didn’t say a lot more of equally nice things in that Chesterfieldian manner and with such a perfect French accent.
But he “got in bad” that afternoon with divers and sundry other guests of Mrs. Ralston. Mrs. Augustus O. Vanderpool and Miss Gerald weren’t the only ones who threw cold glances his way, for the faux pas he made – that he had to make – were something dreadful. For example, when some one asked him what he thought of Miss Schermerhorn’s voice, he had to say huskily what was in his mind:
“It is rather too strident, isn’t it?” No sugar-coating the truth! If he had said anything else he would have been compromising with veracity; he would not have