“You are only just in time,” she says, meeting his vexed eyes with a little laugh which he would think the most delicious in the world if he had not heard it bestowed upon any number of the golden youths during the last hour. “I have put your name down for this very waltz, and I was reflecting a moment ago whether I should have to send Percy to look you up, or whether I should give it to the multitude who are begging for it!”
Zai says all this with an air of delightful coquetry which is perfectly foreign to her. Poor child, she is of course only playing a part to hide her misery and mortification about Carl, but she plays it extremely well, and the coquettishness is remarkably becoming to her.
“I wonder you hesitated over the alternative, when there are so many to whom you could give the dance with satisfaction, no doubt, to both sides;” he answers a little sulkily.
“Yes! there are a good many,” Zai admits with ingenuous frankness. “But, then, you see, I thought you really wanted it! If you don’t—— ”
“You know I do!” he cries, quite unable to resist the pure, soft, sweet face uplifted to him.
All his mighty vexation is scattered to the four winds as he looks down on her.
In this world everything repeats itself.
Like the judges of old—whose fiat was stayed by fair Phryne’s face and form—so Zai’s pretty grey eyes, snowlidded and blacklashed, and her smile, even though it be forced, disperse this man’s anger in a trice.
As he speaks the band strikes up “Bitter Sweet,” and putting his arm around her elaborately whaleboned waist, yet a dainty lissom waist in spite of whalebone, he whirls her away.
It is a glorious waltz—the room is lengthy, the floor well waxed, the lights glitter, and the music peals out an exhilarating strain, and these two have danced often enough together to know well the other’s step and peculiarities.