The music died in a splendid crash, and they threaded their way to their seats, slowly and often stopped, across the crowded floor. Many eyes followed them as they walked. She was still "new" to us; she was beautiful; she was her own young lady, and something about her suggested that she would be slightly unsafe for boys, the headstrong, and the foolish; rumor made her colossally wealthy. As for him, he was the glass of fashion and the mould of form, and much more than that besides. Of an old name but a scanty fortune, he had won his place by his individual merits; chiefly, perhaps, for so wags the world, by an exterior singularly prepossessing and a manner that was a possession above rubies. His were good looks of the best fashion of men's good looks; not a tall man, he yet gave the effect of tallness, so perfect was his carriage, so handsome his address. And he was as clever as charming; cultured as the world knows culture; literary as the term goes; nor was there any one who made a happier speech than he, whether in the forum or around the festal board. Detractors, of course, he had—as which of those who raise their heads above the dead level have not?—but they usually contented themselves with saying, as Buck Klinker had once said, that his manners were a little too good to be true. To most he seemed a fine type of the young American of the modern South; a brave gentleman; a true Democrat with all his honors; and, though he had not yet been tested in any position of responsibility, a rising man who held the future in his hand.
They took their seats, and at last he freed himself from the unsteadying embarrassment which had shaken him at the first sight of her under the brilliant lights of the ballroom.
"Two things have happened to make this seventh of March a memorable day for me," said he. "Two great honors have come to me. They are both for your ear alone."
She flung upon him the masked battery of her eyes. They were extraordinary eyes, gray and emerald, not large, but singularly long. He looked fully into them, and she slowly smiled.
"The other honor," said Charles Gardiner West, "is of a commoner kind. They want to make me president of Blaines College."
"Oh—really!" said Miss Avery, and paused. "And shall you let them do it?"
He nodded, suddenly thoughtful and serious. "Long before snow flies, Semple & West will be Semple and Something else. They'll elect me in June. I needn't say that no one must know of this now—but you."
"Of course. It is a great honor," she said, with faint enthusiasm. "But why are you giving up your business? Doesn't it interest you?"
He made a large gesture. "Oh, it interests me.... But what does it all come to, at the last? A man aspires to find some better use for his abilities than dollar-baiting, don't you think?"
Miss Avery privately thought not, though she certainly did not like his choice of terms.