Helene was startled, certainly, but not beyond speech. "Bill Wright," she cried, "you're a beast! You bring me home on our wedding night and leave me for your silly machine and without a single solitary drop to drink in the servomech and I go out for something and come back to find you flying after that blonde hussy!" She swept up around the chandelier, her orbit grazing it at perihelion but apparently destined to be far remote at aphelion.
"But, dear—" I started.
"Don't dear me!" she cried, and went out of my range of vision just as I overtook Gladys and her outflung arms caught me painfully by the neck.
Which is when Helene's orbit mercifully turned out to be a collision orbit with Gladys'—and she took Gladys away from me like a super-Nike taking out a stratojet-bomber. They bounced against the ceiling. Gladys took the impact. Rearward. Fortunately Mother Nature had been kind.
Helene bounced away from Gladys. Strands of blonde hair went with her.
"Dark roots!" Helene cried triumphantly.
Gladys said a bad word.
I conjectured.
"Say," I said, but the girls were shouting. I yelled, "Hey!"
They quieted but kept glaring balefully at each other and circled like a couple of female wrestlers waiting—but wholly unable—to pounce.