"Shall we dance or promenade?" asked Ryder.
Hesitatingly her gaze met his. Red and gold and green and blue flecks of confetti were glimmering like fishscales over her black wrap and were even entangled drolly in the absurd lengths of her eye-lashes.
"It is—if I have not forgotten how to dance," she murmured. "If it is a waltz, perhaps—"
It was a waltz. Ryder had an odd impression of her irresolution before, with strange eagerness, he swept her into the music. Within the clumsy bulk of her draperies his arm felt the slightness of her young form. She was no more than a child.... No child, either, at a masquerade, but a fairy, dancing in the moonlight.... She was a leaf blowing in the breeze.... She was the very breeze and the moonlight.
And then, to his astonishment, the dance was over. Those moments had seemed no more than one.
"We must have the next," he said quickly. "What made you think you had forgotten?"
"It is nearly four years, monsieur, since I danced with a man."
"With a man? You have been dancing with girls, then?"
She nodded.
"At a school?"