Suddenly besides that still, watching apparition there came up another boyish figure—typically English, in ordinary evening dress, and tall, towering above the young German waiter of whom he was making some inquiry. For a second they stood so; the waiter glancinc up, the newcomer, Paul Dampier, with his blonde head tilted a little back, his eyes raking the crowd.
"Ah! he's come," cried Gwenna aloud, but unheard in the universal clatter. Her heart leaped....
But Paul Dampier, the airman, was swallowed up again almost directly in a forest of odd, luridly-coloured head-dresses. He had not seen her.
And she did not see him again until some time after supper was ended, and the throng was whirling and writhing in one-step and ragtime in the other marquee.
Gwenna had danced with an Apache, with a Primitive Man, with Mr. Hugo Swayne (in a mask and crazy-work domino as a Simultaneous Dynamism of Something), and she was standing waiting, one of a figure in a revived cotillon.
While the Viennese band swooped and tore through the waltz "Nights of Gladness" a sheet had been fetched and was held up at the end of the ballroom between a Morris-dancer and an incredibly handsome "Turco" (who presently revealed himself as Mr. Swayne's French engineer), as a screen before six of the girls. Six men were to be led up to it in turn; each to choose his partner by the feet that were just allowed to show below the sheet.
Soft laughter and twittering went on at the side where the half-dozen girls stood.
"I say," exclaimed a damsel dressed as an Austrian Peasant to her crinolined neighbour, "now we see why you were so anxious to explain why you were wearing scarlet——"
"Of course he'd know yours anywhere," retorted the next girl.
"Ssh! Play fair!" protested the next. "Mustn't be recognised by your voice!"