“Indeed I have,” Mrs. Troup sighed. “I’ve told her every day for years that she hadn’t any. I noticed it first when she was thirteen years old. It seemed to break out on her, as it were, that year.”
“How did it happen?”
“Why, we were staying at a summer hotel, a rather gay place, and I’m afraid I left her too much to her governess—I was feeling pretty blue that summer and I wanted distraction. I liked tangoing——”
“ ‘Tangoing’?” he said inquiringly. “Was it a game?”
“No; a dance. They called it ‘the tango’; I don’t know why. And there was ‘turkey-trotting,’ too——”
“ ‘Turkey-trotting’?” he said huskily.
“Well, that,” she explained, “was really the machiche that tourists used to see in Paris at the Bal Bullier. In fact, you saw it yourself, Charles. A couple danced the machiche that night at the Folies Ber——” She checked herself hastily, bit her lip, and then, recovering, she said: “I got quite fond of all those dances after we imported them.”
“You mean you got used to looking at them?” he asked slowly. “You went to see them at places where they were allowed?”
At this she laughed. “No, of course not! I danced them myself.”
“What!”