At least he was holding her closer. But his heart and his pulse found it hard to keep the slow rhythm. They boomed, pounded, plunged as though he were one with some cosmic ocean. And the new step Joan wanted him to learn was mathematically precise, for all that the partner must be held so very close.
It was naturally, then, some time before Hugh got back to the subject of the exhibition, and he only returned to it at all—desperately trying to ignore the mad race of his blood—because of Ariel. He must take news to her, detailed news, since Frye had neglected to write again in answer to her instant letter of many eager questions. Joan, of course, could now tell him all that they wanted to know. He hoped Ariel would be awake when he got home and thought she would; for he had telephoned her that he was to see Schwankovsky himself to-night. He had refrained from mentioning Joan only because Ariel, strangely, seemed to resent Joan’s part in her amazing good fortune.
“It’s too splendid about Schwankovsky—that he should be so enthusiastic about the pictures!” he managed finally. “Did you have to do much persuading—after he had seen them, I mean? And have you seen any of them yourself yet? Joan! You were a darling to do it!”
There were the other two again, Schwankovsky smiling intimately into Joan’s passing eyes, Miss Loring into Hugh’s. “Like silly monkeys going past on a merry-go-round. I wish they’d stop it. Joan won’t listen. She hasn’t heard a word,” Hugh groaned to himself. And all the time there was his thundering heart, his pulse to ignore,—holding Joan close like this in the slow movements of the dance.
“Does Schwankovsky think the exhibition is bound to be a success?” Hugh’s voice raised itself, insistent, above the electrola’s blare, and above the thundering of the cosmic sea in his blood. Joan began to pay attention.
“What exhibition?” she asked. “Which exhibition?”
“Ariel’s.... The Gregory Clare pictures, of course.”
“Oh! So it’s Ariel again. Good Heavens! I keep forgetting that wretched girl. The wretched artist-father too! Sorry, Hugh. I know you feel responsible about the stupid business. That you’re worried. Who wouldn’t be! But it isn’t at all likely that Michael knows anything about that silly exhibition,—if there is really to be one. Why should he be bothered?”
“But I thought that Schwankovsky—that you, Joan—that you’d got him to look at the pictures, and that that was why—”
Joan laughed tolerantly. “Well, I haven’t got him to look at them. I don’t even know where they are, in fact. And I’m glad I don’t. After the sample you showed me! But there’s nothing to keep you from pulling wires for Ariel, if you like. Why, you might even get Michael as a patron for the event. What a delicious idea!”