"But I don't know how to dance," she gasped as she felt herself being drawn smoothly across the floor.
"That doesn't matter, Sorcerette, dear," said Clarence blandly. "Just let go—be clay in the hands of the potter. I'll do the dancing for two. Hear me?"
Joy did as she was told, and—marvel of marvels!—found herself following him easily. She was really dancing!
"But why did you call me that?" she demanded, like a child, as she got her breath. To her apprehensive mind the name sounded as if Gail had not only learned her dark secret but had passed it on to her dear Cousin Clarence.
"Because you look it," said he promptly, in a voice that softened from word to word. "...Harrington is a good dancer, isn't he? Phyllis looks all right, but I fancy she guides hard. Those tall women often do.... Why, anybody with brows and lashes like yours, and hair that color, combined with that angelic please-guide-me-through-a-hard-world expression simply shrieks aloud for a name like that. A sorcerette is a cross between a seraph and a little witch. There's no telling what she might do to you!"
"Oh!" cooed Joy.
It sounded like a very happy "Oh," and Clarence, experienced love-pirate though he was, hadn't a way in the world of knowing that Joy's pleasure came of being still undiscovered, not of his winning ways.
She danced on with him to the very last note of the record, enraptured to find that she really could dance, and came back to the end of the room where Mrs. Hewitt still sat; her eyes starry with delight.
"Oh, I can dance when I just go where the man takes me!" she cried. "I never knew I could!"
"You dance very well," said John's quiet voice from behind his mother's chair. "Will you dance with me now?"