Again: "Selfish!"
But Fairchild did not appear to hear.
"And the next and the next and the next!" he urged as the caller issued his inevitable invitations for couples. Anita smiled.
"Maybe—I 'll think about it."
"I 'll never know how to dance, unless you teach me." Fairchild pleaded, as they made their way to the center of the floor. "I 'll—"
"Don't work on my sympathies!"
"But it's the truth. I never will."
"S'lute yo' podners!" The dance was on. And while the music squealed from the rostrum, while the swaying forms some way made the rounds according to the caller's viewpoint of an old-time dance, Anita Richmond evidently "thought about it." When the next dance came, they went again on the floor together, Robert Fairchild and the brown-eyed girl whom he suddenly realized he loved, without reasoning the past or the future, without caring whom she might be or what her plans might contain; a man out of prison lives by impulse, and Fairchild was but lately released.
A third dance and a fourth, while in the intervals Fairchild's eyes sought out the sulky, sullen form of Maurice Rodaine, flattened against the wall, eyes evil, mouth a straight line, and the blackness of hate discoloring his face. It was as so much wine to Fairchild; he felt himself really young for the first time in his life. And as the music started again, he once more turned to his companion.
Only, however, to halt and whirl and stare in surprise. There had come a shout from the doorway, booming, commanding: