Arethusa blushed.
And off they started together to the sound of a waltz that could not have helped but make the stiffest possible person dance like an angel, no matter how badly he might have danced before hearing this particular tune. It was a strain of melody with a haunting tinge of delicious melancholy. It aroused all sorts of queer, indistinct little longings, and aching memories of other happy times irretrievably past. Its sound seemed meant to dream by, or to make love by; ordinary speech seemed a real sacrilege while it quivered in the air.
Mr. Bennet had a little way when he danced with Arethusa (or when he danced with any girl alive for that matter, although she did not know this) of making it seem as though he thought that they were the one and only couple in all Christendom who had ever danced together for the dance to amount to anything worth remembering; as though she were the only girl he had ever really cared to dance with; and as though now, with bodies tuned to the one strain of those violins sobbing their soft refrain over and over, he had reached Paradise with the girl in his arms.
The music stopped.
Arethusa sighed with a funny little catch of her breath. "That ... that sounded just like Heaven," she said, softly.
Mr. Bennet bent his handsome head. "Was it only the music?" he asked.
He could not help asking it, and asking it just exactly as he did.
Arethusa laughed, it was a most subdued little sound of embarrassment, and her only answer. And partly the spell of that wonderful music, and partly her quaint worship of the man standing beside her, made her wish to get away from the crowd and their chattering talk of nothings for a wee while.
"Let's go sit in our little room," she suggested, with a bit of emphasis on the "our."
An encore to that waltz was starting just as they reached the entrance to the green recess, and Mr. Bennet hesitated. "Shall we go back and try this?"