Rodrigo admitted that he did, and the three walked over toward the seats at the side of the ballroom, Sophie retaining an intimate grip upon Rodrigo's arm.
"Now, dear boy, tell me all that has happened since I saw you last," she bubbled. "Where have you been keeping yourself? Why have you been hiding from all your old friends? Some of the girls we used to pal around with are in this show—Muriel Case, Betty Brewster—do you remember them? But please give me a cigarette, somebody, or I shall perish. Oh, thank you, Rodrigo." She took a second to inhale gratefully. "Has Gil—Mr. Christy told you that I have a featured part in this show? We're on our way to conquer Broadway now—that is, if some fool doesn't mislay my bags again." She flashed her small head at Christy an instant and glowered. Rodrigo wondered if there was some more intimate tie between Sophie and the producer than merely that of artiste and manager.
"But do tell me something about yourself—I'm all thrilled with interest, truly," she rattled on. He had hardly started to accept her invitation when the music shuffled on again, and without waiting for him to ask her, she popped up and held out her arms to him.
Sophie was an adorable dancer, and Rodrigo was quite as expert as she. If her pliant body clung rather closer to his than was necessary, he was surely not the one to protest. He stopped talking and gave himself over to the rhythm of the dance. For the time being there was nothing in his head except the tom-tom beat of the jazz orchestra and the intoxicating presence of this white, satiny girl. It mattered not that she was shallow, selfish, mascaroed, rouged. She had the power of, for the moment, setting his senses aglow, of banishing the workaday world into oblivion. She had suddenly become a sparkling fountain of pleasure. His mind grasped at length that the music had stopped, they had stopped dancing. As he released Sophie, too hurriedly, she tilted her head and shot a significant little smile up at him. The smile said: "You are still the same old Rodrigo." Was he? The thought disturbed him, because he knew it was almost true. And he did not wish it to be true any longer. He was leaving his old life behind. It had been waste—pleasurable perhaps, but still waste. John Dorning was hereafter to be his ideal.
He led Sophie decorously back to their chair and discovered, to his secret dismay, that Gilbert Christy had departed.
"Oh, thank heaven he's gone," Sophie approved heartily, spreading out her creamy skirts and slipping over very close to Rodrigo when he sat down. "I had a terrible row with him over my bags, you know. He found them under my bunk, after I'd sent the company manager for him, and he got very sarcastic about my helplessness. I made him apologize good and proper, you can bet, before I'd come up and dance with him, and it isn't over yet. I'm not in the chorus any more. I don't have to get down and grovel." Her wide blue eyes were snapping.
"Aren't you and Christy very close friends then?" asked Rodrigo. She glanced inquiringly at him, as if to detect in his expression what it was he suspicioned. But Rodrigo's face was a mask of innocence.
"One has to keep on the right side of the cove who is paying the bills," said Sophie carelessly. Then, lowering her voice and injecting into it a soft note that was disturbing to him, she asked, "But, Rodrigo, haven't you missed me at all?"
"Many times," he answered.
"We used to have some wonderful hours together."