"Yes, of course. Why, I don't believe you have got one!"
"Yes, I have," she said, and held it up to him. In a second it was in his hand, as indeed she had intended that it should be.
"Well, now," said Roland, "as far as I can see you've got only Nos. 6, 7, 14 and 15 engaged; that leaves fourteen for me."
"Well, you can have the four," she laughed.
In the end she gave him six. "And if I've any over you shall have them," she promised.
"Well you know there won't be," and their eyes met in a moment of quiet intimacy.
As soon as he had gone other partners crowded round her. In a very short while her programme was filled right up, the five extras as well. She had left No. 17 vacant; it was the last waltz. She felt that she might like Roland to have it, but was not sure. She didn't quite know why, but she felt she would leave it open.
It was a splendid dance. As the evening passed, her face flushed and her eyes brightened, and it was delightful to slip from the heat of the ballroom on to the wide balcony and feel the cool of the air on her bare arms. She danced once with Ralph, and as they sat out afterwards she could almost feel the touch of his eyes on her. Poor Ralph; he was so clumsy. How absurd it was of him to be in love with her. As if she could ever care for him. She felt no pity. She accepted his admiration as a queen accepts a subject's loyalty; it was the right due to her beauty, to the eager flow of life that sustained her on this night of triumph.
And every dance with Roland seemed to bring her nearer to the wonderful moment to which she had so long looked forward. When she was dancing with Ralph, Roland's eyes would follow her all round the room, smiling when they met hers. And when they danced together they seemed to share a secret with one another, a secret still unrevealed.
Through the languid ecstasy of a waltz the words that he murmured into her ear had no relation with their accepted sense. He was not repeating a piece of trivial gossip, a pun, a story he had heard at school; he was wooing her in their own way, in their own time. And afterwards as they sat on the edge of the balcony, looking out over the roofs and lights of London, she began to tell him about her dress and the trouble that she had had with her mother. "She said I ought to wear a horrid thing with yellow and green stripes that doesn't suit me in the least. And I wouldn't. I stole out of the house when she wasn't looking."