In and out among them, two slender, quick-turning figures were making an intricate way. The girl danced delicately and surely, a faint, half smile parting her lips, her small, smooth head erect, the silvery gold hair that crowned it shimmering and pale in the uncompromising light of the newly installed electric chandeliers, her eyes intent on the boy.
His performance was not expert, but it had a charm all its own. He put a great deal of strength into it, and made it evident that he possessed still more; strength enough to master the art of dancing once and for all, by the sheer force of it, if he cared to exert it, and a laughing light in his eyes, as if dancing was not important enough for that, and nothing else was.
An ambitious pair, experimenting with the dip waltz, just introduced that year, and pausing on the most awkward spots in the crowded floor, blocked his path, and he swung heavily out of their way just in time, squaring his chin and holding his head a shade higher. The girl in red was whirled toward him in double-quick time, and he dodged, miscalculated his distance, but met the shock of her squarely, whisking Judith out of her way.
"Good try, Murph," her partner called.
Willard regarded the encounter disapprovingly from the door of the gentlemen's dressing-room, to which he had edged his way. His was not an expressive countenance, and that was a protection to him just now. He was bewildered and deeply hurt, but he merely looked fat and slightly puzzled, as usual.
"Judy turn you down?" inquired his friend Mr. Ward, also watching from the dressing-room door, with the few other gentlemen who were without partners for this dance. It was the most important dance of the evening, for you danced it with the lady of your choice, or with nobody. It cemented new intimacies or foreshadowed the breaking of old; settled anew the continually agitated question of "who was going with who."
"Judy turn you down?" said Mr. Ward, but he meant it as a pleasantry. Mr. Willard Nash was not often turned down, even at this early age. He was too eligible.
"Rena turn you down, Ed?"
"Yes." Mr. Ward became suddenly confidential, and lowered his voice. "Mad. She wanted me to get her a shinguard to mount tintypes on—tintypes of the team."
"Buy it or steal it?" inquired Willard sarcastically.