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A slightly increased pressure of the hand was Harry's only response. He had rapidly fallen into that mood of enjoyment which gave his nature its fullest play. His energy was being employed; he was being charmed and gratified; his senses were all being titillated. Half a hundred women would have given him most of his present pleasure, but the novelty no less than the beauty of Patricia supplied just that added spice which any indulged appetite presently demands in its exercise.
They danced three times, and then sat down, watching the other dancers and comparing their styles. Here they could see a pair pedantically apart, correctness itself; there a couple buried in each other, the young man's face lost to view in his partner's hair. Every degree of absorption in the dance or in physical sensation was to be observed. The one thing absent from all faces was love; but since Harry and Patricia were not looking for this rare emotion in others they did not observe its absence.
Patricia was the first to catch sight of Monty, for whose figure she had been searching in the crowd. As she could have foretold, he was dancing perfectly. Blanche was rather stiff, she was pleased to notice. Monty's expression was that of one who was bored: a line of white showed beneath the iris of his eyes. His manner was almost too easy, as though his thoughts were engaged otherwise than with his partner or the dance. Nevertheless, he was obviously at home. His clothes fitted and suited him. He was far beyond most of his neighbours in appearance; for in too many of these Patricia cruelly discerned mediocrity. She shook her head at the spectacle of so much that was to her fresh eye uninspired and uninspiring.
"You see Monty?" she said to Harry.
He was about to answer when a swarm of people seemed to rise up about them. All greeted Harry. It was a large party, newly arrived, all the members of which appeared to be his friends. Young men, some of them fair, with toothbrush moustaches and curly hair, some of them dark and clean-shaven and very like Jack Penton in appearance; young women of all colours and all varieties of noisiness, clamoured for his attention. All the young men were combed and brushed to resemble tailors' dummies; all the young women were freshly powdered and freshly adorned with rouge and belladonna and those aids to lashes and brows and hair which heighten the attractiveness of women already attractive. Patricia listened laughingly while each was introduced to her; but she heard none of their names, and only knew that she was in the midst of a lively party. She could not analyse them, although she tried to do so in a hurry; and so she accepted them simply as Harry's perhaps ever so slightly peculiar friends. Only when it became clear that they proposed to settle in this place and spoil her evening with Harry did Patricia take alarm. She was moving very quietly, preparing for the first notes of the next dance, when she saw the liveliest of the girls—a brunette who was beautiful enough to be dangerous, and obviously adept at this practice—seize Harry, pull him in step towards the dancing space, and thus forcibly kidnap him.
"Well!" ejaculated Patricia, wholly to herself. Harry cast a laughing, appealing glance at her. He was captured, and by a ruthless and rather boisterous victor. Patricia followed the two indignantly with her eyes. Swift anger gripped her. She had never been so angry as at this trifling folly. It was a direct challenge to her. It was a thing she could not have done herself—this impudent appropriation of a man who was confessedly present as the escort of another girl. She disliked the interloper. She was instantly suspicious of her. Although impulsive herself, Patricia had no interest in the impulsiveness of others, especially if the others were girls. Her anger blazed silently for a full minute. Slowly it diminished. She found herself almost deserted by the party of intruders, all of whom, with great freedom of gesture, were now dancing. Only one rueful young man remained; a young man with unoccupied blue eyes and flaxen hair, who looked painfully surprised at everything, and was in appearance so almost excessively juvenile as to make Patricia suppose him fresh from school.
"Er ..." said the young man, with great feebleness of intellect.
"Yes!" cried Patricia. "I never saw anything like it. It's shameful. It's cradle-snatching. Was she your partner? Never mind; come along!" She swept him into the arena, as indomitably unmoved in appearance as she could have desired. Though her heart was burning, Patricia's pride was beyond reproach. Nevertheless, she was desperately wounded.