He rose, and stood in front of her while Holden passed slowly in the crowd, turning his penetrating eye from side to side, but missing them completely.
“Florence,” he said, “thaw me out. I’m frozen stiff. Come, I’m stale with self-communications.”
He thrust his arm through hers as he drew her around the skirts of the crowd. She felt its urge with a heightened pulse.
“Isn’t this rather conspicuously inconspicuous?” she wanted to know as he seated her behind a palm in the crook of a side stair.
“Quite within the limits,” he assured her. “Or do you want to be interrupted?”
“Tony, you’re almost formal!”
“You make me feel so. You’re a stranger.”
Upon this, the curve of her smile was almost childlike.
“Why,” he laughed, surprised, “you’re younger than I!”
The glittering butterfly in her hair trembled with her laughter.