The hotel-dance, therefore, while it forced her elbows to touch common clay, had a measure of consolation in giving her moments of solitude. She wanted to grapple with her problem. She did. It proved elusive and slippery and tireless. Worse, it grinned at her.
Yet Rosalind was game. Only once had fortitude failed her, and she blushed with hot shame when she thought of that unhappy time—the time during which she sat ten feet above the ground and yielded to the humiliating weakness of begging for release from a captivity that resulted directly from her own curiosity. That was an affair of bitter and vengeful memory; she had not even begun to pay off the smallest fraction of the score.
Tom Witherbee came to claim her. She had the bad grace to sigh as she rose. She hoped he would not step on her feet, but she was not optimistic; for the Jones boy, who would not have been picked by the casual observer as ah awkward person, had displayed the appalling accomplishment of stepping on both her feet at the same time, and doing it with no apparent physical effort or acceleration of breath.
They were hurrying swiftly across the floor, Rosalind trying to decide whether Tom Witherbee danced like a frog or a rabbit, when somebody blew a shrill whistle. With an abrupt apology she found herself released by her partner.
Then something horrible happened. She was a link in an endless chain of persons who had joined hands and were boisterously whirling in an undulating circle, like children playing "London Bridge."
Rosalind had heard of such things. In some places they called it the Paul Jones; in others it had equally undescriptive names. But by whatever term it was always the same; it meant changing partners every time a fiend blew a whistle—taking pot-luck with the crowd.
Another shrill toot sounded. The men began weaving in and out to the right, the women to the left. Rosalind was driven onward remorselessly by the necessity of saving her heels from being stepped on. She did not look like a lady who enjoyed being among the peasants and humble villagers. Her jaw was set at too grim an angle.
The whistle blew again at an instant when Rosalind's left hand was grasped firmly by one knight of the white shirt-front, while her right had just been seized by another. The signal, she knew, meant another partner. She wavered; it seemed like a chance to escape.
The captor of her left hand whirled about and stretched forth his arms. It was a fatal and short-sighted maneuver, for in doing so he released her fingers. Then with compelling force Rosalind found herself drawn into a firm grip by the person who still retained her right hand. She was dancing again.
It happened so swiftly that her half-formed intention to flee from the dance was never carried into execution. She was angry at herself, at Tom Witherbee, at the whole undignified affair.