He drew up a second chair, saying quietly: "I understand so well that I will either go away or stay and play watch-dog; which do you prefer? I see two callow youths in there who are looking toward this window as their only loophole of escape, but they will not come until I go."
"Then please stay," said Poppea, with a shimmer of a laugh, soothed into perfect tranquillity by the self-possession of her companion,—a condition that caused her much wonder when she afterward analyzed it.
Much clapping of hands announced the completion of the first group of pictures, and the stringed quartet struck up a Strauss waltz, to the compelling measure of which Poppea's fingers, hanging over the back of the chair, tapped time.
"Are you fond of dancing?"
"Yes and no; there are times when it seems as if I must dance, but I do not believe that I could ever dance to order."
"I have seen you somewhere before, but very long ago," he said abruptly.
"Yes, I remember your face. I have been thinking and thinking when and where. Ah! now I have it!" Poppea exclaimed, flushing deeply, so that even in the moonlight it rivalled the color of the flowers in her hair.
"Do you remember once calling upon the Felton ladies in New York one afternoon and finding a half-wild girl dancing before the parlor mirror?"
"By Jove! that's it, and you were the little girl! I can see it all perfectly. I should judge that it was one of the times that you danced because you must, was it not?"
"Oh, yes, the windows were so heavy that they would not open, and the carpets so thick they held my feet, and I began to feel as though I were in prison and should never get out, and so I danced to be sure that I was alive."