“Yes,” she said; “but wait.” Half a dozen men and women came running out on the rink; with lifted feet, hand in hand, they danced like flying sunbeams.
Then a German pair followed the Polish. Both were strong, first-rate skaters, but the man was rough and selfish; he pulled his girl about, was careless of her, and in the end let her down, and half the audience hissed.
Swedish, Norwegian, French pairs followed swiftly after. Then Claire rose with a quickening of her breath.
“Now,” she said, “you!” It was curious how seldom she said Major Staines.
Winn didn’t much care to do this kind of thing before foreigners. However, it was in a way rather jolly, especially when the music warmed one’s blood. He swept her out easily to the center of the ice. For a time he had only to watch her. He wondered what she looked like to all the black-headed dots sitting in the sun and gazing. In his heart there was nothing left to which he could compare her. She turned her head a little, curving and swooping toward him, and then sprang straight into the air. He had her fast for a moment; her hands were in his, her eyes laughed at his easy strength, and again she shot away from him. Now he had to follow her, in and out, to the sound of the music; at first he thought of the steps, but he soon stopped thinking. Something had happened which made it quite unnecessary to think.
He was reading everything she knew out of his own heart; she had got into him somehow, so that he had no need to watch for his cue.
Wherever she wanted him he was; whenever she needed the touch of his hand or his steadiness it was ready for her. They were like the music and words of a song, or like a leaf and the dancing air it rests upon. They were no longer two beings; they had slipped superbly, intolerably into one; they couldn’t go wrong; they couldn’t make a mistake. Where she led he followed, indissolubly a part of her.
They swung together for the final salute. It seemed to Winn that her heart — her happy, swift-beating, exultant heart — was in his breast, and then suddenly, violently he remembered that she wasn’t his, that he had no right to touch her. He moved away from her, leaving her, a little bewildered, to bow alone to the great cheering mass of people.
She found him afterward far back in the crowd, with a white face and inscrutable eyes.