"Mr. Merridew, Miss Dulcie Levine, Miss Levine, Mr. Merridew, two of the best, seasonable weather for the time of the year, ain't it, what? Permit me, Dulcibella, a bit of fluff" (here Mr. Mackie cast aside the bit of fluff, if there was one, which he had taken from Miss Dulcie's shoulder, and represented the noise of its falling by a loud stamp on the floor). "Ought to be dancing soon; what time is it by your clocks, Dulcie? I saw them as you got out of the Black Maria, the cab, I mean—heu, desist, Mr. Mackie, you wag!" (Mr. Mackie smacked his own wrist in reproof of himself.) "Why am I not in me usual spirits, gin cold, to-night, Dulcinea? 'Tis thy fatal beauty has undone me; what ho, a needle and threat, O fairest of thy socks, sex I should say.... Ay, she dances, Archibald, but not with thee, base varlet; she dances at the Theatre hight Alcazar, nigh unto ye Square called Leicester."
Louie heard Kitty Windus whisper to Evie Soames that Mr. Mackie was going to be splendid to-night; but her approval did not extend to Mr. Mackie's friend, who was already too splendid. Kitty's head was held so high when Miss Levine passed that she appeared to be looking at her with her nostrils. With her eyes she saw only the orange creature's back. This was a rather handsome V, and that did not improve matters. Kitty whispered behind her fan about "some people." Miss Dulcie used Kitty as a quizzing-glass for the inspection of whoever happened to be behind her.
Mr. Jeffries stood with his back against the thrown-back folding door. He did not dance, but he had not at all the air of a wet blanket; on the contrary, his face wore a quite lively smile. He was smiling at the red and green tissue paper that enswathed the central chandelier. Louie saw Evie Soames pass him; his eyes rested on her for a moment, but only as they rested on everybody else, and then went back to the red and green tissue paper of the chandelier again. He had accepted the inevitable, then. Indeed, had he not done so, Louie could hardly imagine that he would have been there. Well, it was the most sensible thing he could do. Louie would go and speak to him presently.
Louie made a tour of the rooms. The E of reference-books had been turned into a place for sitting out, and in the typewriting-room the lids of two or three desks had been wedged up to form card-tables. Into the room beyond, which was the smoking-room, she did not penetrate. Already a fiddle was tuning up, but Louie had told young Merridew, who had magnanimously asked her for her card, that she did not intend to dance. None the less he had taken her card and scrawled something on it. She had tossed the piece of violet-written pasteboard into a corner.
At nine o'clock there was a tapping on the top of the piano, and the music began. Mr. Mackie and the lady in orange glided out over the French-chalked floor. Two minutes later the room was full of waltzing couples.
Louie had sat down on the opposite side of the room to Mr. Jeffries. Through momentarily clear spaces she saw him from time to time. He did not move from his station by the folding door, where, among the hoppers and caperers who sped past him, he seemed to have something of the stability of a monument in some centre of apparently aimless traffic. Still, he seemed to be enjoying himself, and Louie intended to go across to him when the waltz was over.
A word she overheard, however, caused her to change her mind and to rise to her feet at once. Mr. Mackie, passing with his orange partner, had repeated his jape about the Ruthless Boaz.
Without more ado Louie threaded her way through the dancers and stood before Mr. Jeffries.
"Won't you try to dance?" she said.
As he turned the amber eyes on her she had the feeling that she slid all at once into the field of some piece of apparatus with an object-glass. She was the object. For a moment he forgot his smile; he looked attentively at her; and then the smile returned. He answered in an easy, deep voice, the accent of which was neither Cockney nor yet quite of the mode of the men Louie knew.