Joy, regarding him, saw that he was vexed. Most people would not have noticed it, but very few of his moods escaped Joy. He was a little graver than usual, and his voice was quieter.
"If I can," she answered. "I thought you were dancing this with Miss Maddox."
"I didn't think it would show proper courtesy to my fiancée to dance first with some one else," John answered.
Clarence had set the music going again, and was swinging round the room with Gail. As it began, John, with no more words, drew Joy out on the floor with him.
She looked up in surprise at his words.
"Why—why, I didn't know I was that much of a fiancée to you. I thought probably you'd rather be with Gail. And—and I didn't know I was going to dance anyway. I didn't know I could!"
He looked down at her again, apparently to see whether she was in earnest, holding her off for a moment as they danced.
She hoped he would deny that he preferred being with Gail, but he did not.
"We are going through our month of relationship right," he told her definitely, smiling, but looking down at her with the steady, steel-colored light in his gray eyes that she knew meant "no appeal." "Gail does not enter into it at all. But I admit that Rutherford's quickness put me in the wrong."
"If only," thought Joy, acutely conscious of his firm hold, "instead of laying down the law that way, he would let go and admit that he was angry!" For he certainly was, and it wasn't at all her fault, unless going where Clarence took her was a crime. John hadn't thought of dancing first. Was he the kind of person who always thought he was right even when he knew he wasn't? If so, maybe a month was long enough.... But the thought of the end of the month hurt, no matter how unreasonable she tried to think John, and she threw down her arms—the only way, if she had known, to make John throw down his.