"You dance—are you sure?" asked Emma Fornez, looking at his flushed face with an anxious look; for some of the men, notably Lorraine and Lynch, were in a visibly excited state.
"Very well," he said confidently.
"Allons, then!"
The dance he had chosen was one somewhat akin to the tarantella, a slow movement gradually and irresistibly singing up into a barbaric frenzy at the climax—one of those dances that are the epitome of primal coquetry, of the savage fascinating allurements of the feline, provoking to the dancer, doubly provoking to the spectator, bewildered by the sudden antagonisms of the poses and the brusque yieldings. At the end, according to Spanish custom, the dance ended in an embrace. Emma Fornez, surprised to find so inspired a partner, transported by the mood, ended laughingly with a kiss, her warm arms remaining languidly a moment about the shoulders of the young man, whom she complimented with expressions of surprise. Besieged at every side with cries for an encore, they repeated the dance, freer in their revolving movements from the intimacy of the first passage.
From time to time Beecher had managed to steal a glance in the direction of Nan Charters. She was sitting straight and unrelaxing, her eyes never leaving him, the lines of her mouth drawn a little tightly. When Emma Fornez had embraced him for the second time, Beecher, relaxing, perceived that Nan Charters turned her back and was conversing volubly, her shoulders rising and falling with little rapid movements, while her fan had the same nervous lashing that one sees in the uneasy panther.
He was delighted at his success, at the revenge he had inflicted, at the superiority he had regained. The dances began again, but he did not dance. He held himself near the entrance, surveying the scene triumphantly. The experience was new to him; in the few years he had passed since college, he had been really out of the world. This game—the most fascinating of all the games of chance that can fascinate the gambler in each human being—the game between man and woman, came to him as a revelation, with a zest that was almost a discovery of his youth.
All at once a feminine hand was laid on his arm and the voice of Nan Charters said:
"Come outside—in the garden. I want to speak to you. Come quietly."
"'Come outside—in the garden. I want to speak to you. Come quietly'"