He passed into a condition of acute amazement at the others. How could they take it so light-heartedly? Perhaps they didn't care. Or perhaps they felt themselves obliged to pretend since they were still in Don's house. Yes, of course, he ought to pretend too.
Smarting, he sprang up at a new word of command. "How about a little rag-time?" Don was crying in his role of master of ceremonies. "Polly, you to the piano. Get the old banjo, Dick. Clear the floor, boys. Oh, pitch the rugs out of the window, a little rain won't hurt 'em." For through the open windows came the steady voice of a summer downpour.
The musicians struck up "Whistling Rufus," couples were formed and racketed noisily to and fro from the dining-room to the sitting-room and back, with much bumping and giggling at the congested doorway. Neale danced absent-mindedly with a girl whose name he could not remember, and whom he exchanged for a similarly anonymous girl when the tune changed to the "Georgia Camp-meeting." He went on thus, setting his body to do the decent thing, while his spirit lay prostrate within him.
They were dancing harder than ever now, racing long-leggedly from one end of the room to the other, the boys carrying the girls bodily off their feet at some of the turns, the girls abandoning themselves like romping children to the whirlwind of the insistent rhythm, which they marked by shouting out as they danced, "Oh, la la, la, la-la, la la la! There'll be a hot time in the old town to-night!" Neale danced on with the rest. Under his grimly silent exterior, something fine and high and deeply wounded, cried out silently to the others, and received no answer.
The music ended with a crash, the exhausted couples sank into chairs, gasping and fanning each other. Neale's heart leaped to see, half-way up the stairs, Natalie sitting alone as if she had not been dancing. Why, of course. There was Natalie! He had forgotten her. She had understood. The tragedy of the afternoon must have gone home to her. She was a good sport! With a warm glow he hurried up to where she sat, and sank down beside her, his stifling sense of isolation gone.
She lifted the sweet, flower-like mask of her youth to him, her eyes gleaming in the half-light of the stairs. But at the moment, Neale had forgotten whether she was a girl or a boy. She was a good sport. That was what he needed. He started to speak, but a shout of laughter burst out of the room below them. They looked down. In the center of the vociferously amused circle of spectators, Don was making fun of his late adversary's gawky manners and poor eye-sight. He had a racket in his hand, and glaring through it with a burlesque of Peterson's intent short-sighted gaze, he was mimicking the school-boy's strained awkward position at the net.
Neale fell back appalled, and looked to Natalie for sympathy and understanding.
Natalie had also leaned forward, and as they turned towards each other, her face was so close to his that he could see the peach-like bloom on her cheeks.
All the pretty face was quivering with mirth. "Isn't Don the wittiest man!"
Neale got up stiffly and walked down the stairs without a word. Nobody in the crowd of laughing boys and girls paid the least attention to his silent passage through them. He went out on the porch, the beating downpour of the rain suddenly loud in his ears. Oh, all the better! He'd like getting soaked.