“Yes, I know. But... just one waltz!” He leaned nearer to her. “You won’t disappoint me? ... I have waited through the entire evening for this.”
She smiled at the extravagance, but faintly, and looked away across the crowded room with its numberless small tables, and the gay, careless, laughing company that filled them.
“Oh! if you make so much of it!” she said.
Mrs Smythe, who was also gazing about her with more interest in the company than in the supper, here interposed with the irrelevant remark:
“I think Colonel Grey is the most distinguished-looking man I know.”
Van Bleit grunted.
“Oh! I know you don’t like him, Karl... It’s obvious that the antipathy is mutual. But that doesn’t make him any the less interesting from a woman’s point of view. What do you think, Zoë?”
“I think he is exactly what you describe him.”
Mrs Smythe looked at her in surprise. It was not the words, but the manner in which they were delivered, that arrested her attention.
“You don’t like him either,” she said.