“You promised me the first dance,” he breathlessly informed Gail. He had been walking rapidly.
“Are they ready?” she inquired, stepping a pace away from Dick.
“Well, the musicians are coming in,” evaded Cunningham, tucking her hand in his arm.
“I’ve the second one, remember, Gail,” Dick reminded her, as he glanced around the ballroom for his own partner, but Gail distinctly felt his eyes following her as she walked away with Cunningham.
“I know now of what your profile reminds me,” Cunningham told her; “the Charmeaux ‘Praying Nymph.’ It is the most spiritually beautiful of all the pictures in the Louvre.”
“I wonder which is the stronger emotion in me just now,” she returned; “gratified vanity or curiosity.”
“I hope it’s the latter,” smiled Cunningham. “I recall now a gallery in which there is a very good copy of the Charmeaux canvas, and I’d be delighted to take you.”
“I’ll go with pleasure,” promised Gail, and Cunningham turned to her with a grateful smile.
“I would prefer to show you the original,” he ventured.
“Oh, look at them tuning their drums,” cried Gail, and he thought that she had entirely missed his hint, that the keenest delight in his life would be to lead her through the Louvre, and from thence to a perspective of picture galleries, dazzling with all the hues of the spectrum, and as long as life!