The arm about her tightened then. She did not resent it. She had the feeling that after all somehow he was hers. Numbly the thought came to her of how long she had waited for this. From the first her dream had been of such a moment. She would be in his arms and he looking down at her; and then like that, too, he would whisper to her.
"Bab," he said again. "Bab, dear!"
His voice, though he had lowered it until it could barely be heard, rang to her like a trumpet. His face, she knew, too, was so close that it touched the soft stray filaments of her hair. She felt her heart throb ponderously.
"Happy, Bab?" he asked.
A quick breath, half a sob, escaped her. Happy? Varick gave no heed. A laugh, a small, joyous echo of contentment, rippled from his lips, and again she felt his arm tighten about her, possessive, confident. Round them were a hundred others, all elbow to elbow with them, all dancing to the strains of that same languorous, alluring music. But of this neither seemed aware. All Bab knew or cared was that he and she were there; that for this one moment, whatever else might befall, they two were together. What if it were only for her money that he wanted her? What if he had once asked her to marry him for that? It made little difference now. This was her night. This was what she had wanted. For it was of him she had dreamed. It was Varick, after all, she had wanted at her dance. Happy?
Bab's mouth quivered as she pressed it against his sleeve. Varick was still whispering to her softly.
"Bab, you remember the night, don't you, the Christmas Eve when you went away from Mrs. Tilney's? You remember you told me then when you were a little girl, a kid in pigtails and pinafores, you used to dance by yourself to the music of an unseen orchestra there all alone in Mrs. Tilney's kitchen. Remember, Bab?"
Yes, she remembered. She remembered, too, what else she had said that night. An inarticulate murmur escaped her.
"Bab, tell me now, is this like it?" he asked. "Is this the dream come true?"
Was it, indeed? She knew that in her dreams at Mrs. Tilney's a night like this would have seemed veritably a dream. Place, possessions, a name! All these she had now. She was sought after and desired as she had dreamed! Yet was it all as in her dreams she had seen it?