"Walk first," said Sissie professionally.... He was in motion.
"Now!" said Sissie. "One, two. One, two." Miraculously he was dancing! It was as though the whole room was shouting: "They're off!" Sissie steered him.
"Don't look at your feet!" said she sharply, and like a schoolboy he chucked his chin obediently up.... Then he was steering her. Although her feet were the reverse of enormous he somehow could not keep off them; but that girl was made of hardy stuff and never winced. He was doing better. Pride was puffing him. Yet he desired the music to stop. The music did stop.
"Thanks," he breathed.
"Oh, no!" said she. "That's not all." The dancers clapped and the orchestra resumed. He started again. Couples surged around him, and sometimes he avoided them and sometimes he did not. Then he saw a head bobbing not far away, as if it were one cork and he another on a choppy sea. It resembled Eve's head. It was Eve's head. She was dancing with Oswald Morfey. He had never supposed that Eve could dance these new dances.
"Let's stop," said he.
"Certainly not," Sissie forbade. "We must finish it." He finished it, rather breathless and dizzy. He had lived through it.
"You're perfectly wonderful, Arthur," said Eve when they met.
"Oh no! I'm no good."
"I was frightfully nervous about you at first," said Sissie.