So far as I am concerned, Lucy Fulton's dance was a great success, from the arrival of the first guest. I was the first guest.
We had a whole dance to ourselves while Evelyn was busy with the telephone and before the second guest arrived. In all her life Lucy had never looked more animated or more lovely. The musicians caught her enthusiasm and the high spirit which flowed from her like an electric current, and at once these things appeared in their music.
"I've only one sorrow," I said, "that I can't dance with you and watch you dance at the same time."
"But if you had to choose one or the other?"
"I shall choose often," I said, "but I'm afraid others will begin getting chosen. If I had my way there would be no other man but me and no other girl but you, and we'd dance till breakfast time."
"Evelyn," said Lucy, her eyes full of mischief, "could chaperon us from a bench. She could send for her knitting."
"Who is this Evelyn?" I said.
And then the rhythm of the music became too much for us, and we did not speak any more, only danced; only danced and liked each other more and more.
That night it seemed there were no tired men or women in Aiken. There were no lingering groups of yarn-swapping men in the buffet, only half-melted humanity who gulped down a glass of champagne and flew back to the dance. We made so much noise that half the dogs in Aiken barked all night, and roosters waked from sleep began to crow at eleven o'clock.
I am sure that Lucy did not give many thoughts to poor John Fulton, worrying his head off in far New York. She had the greatest power upon her own thoughts of any woman or man I ever knew. And always she chose agreeable and even delightful things to think about. When I try to make castles in the air I get worrying about details, such as neighbors and plumbing. Sometimes I have felt that it would be agreeable to run away from everyone and everything, and live on some South Sea beach in an undershirt and an old pair of trousers. I can see the palms and the breadfruit, as well as the next man. I can picture the friendly brown girls with their bright, black eyes and their long necklaces of scarlet flowers and many-colored shells, and I can hear the long-drawn roar of the surf on the coral beach. But always my bright, hopeful pictures go to smash on details. More insistent than the roar of the surf, I hear the humming of great angry mosquitoes, and I try to figure out what I should do if I came down with appendicitis and no surgeon within a thousand miles.