He took another grip on himself. He must not think of the woman in his arms. Luckily the old-fashioned dance was diverting: while the movement was intoxicating it was reminiscent. He remembered his first waltz—the Carolina hill-town—the moonlight, the smell of the roses—the plump little girl in the white dress, with the red, red sash, and the cheeks as red, with the black eyes and the blacker hair, with the indefinable sensuous physical perfume of Woman, and the very Spirit of the Dance,—she who—yes, she who married the station-agent and was now such a motherly person. He began a speech that would have been cynical. Elise stopped him.
"Don't talk," she said. "Let's dream."
Tumult! Riot! What's the use to hold one's pulses steady when the Lady Beautiful herself incites revolt!
"Let's dream." His heart-strings were set a-tremble by the vibrant richness of her voice, which seemed to have caught the dreaminess and rhythm and resonance of the violins that drew them on. And—
"Don't talk." No: he would not profane the enchantment of that waltz with words; and yet surely My Lady Beautiful were heartless indeed not to catch the messages of love which, pure of the alloy of breath and speech, his every pulse-beat sent unfettered to her heart.
He held her for a moment after the violins had ceased, and the spell of the slow-swinging waltz was still upon them both—when a quick jerk of the fiddles in the ever rollicking two-step brought Sir Monocle to Elise's side. Evans resigned her with a bow and, without so much as a "thank you," went out on the lawn to commune with his heart.
How long that two-step continued, he, seated in a retired nook, did not know. Sometime after it was finished he saw Elise and the Englishman walk down the winding path that led from the front door to the roadside. They stood talking together a minute perhaps till Captain Howard boarded a passing car city-bound. Rutledge noted with a twinge of jealousy the cordial good-bye the girl gave the man, but even at that distance and through the uncertain light he thought he saw—and, queer to say, resented—a certain formality in Captain Howard's adieus to the woman.
He watched her through the trees as she came slowly back up the hill following the turns of the smooth hard walk as it wound through darkness and half lights from the broad gateway to the house. She moved along, a white shadow, slowly at first, and Evans imagined that she was in some such mood as possessed him. Then she started suddenly and ran at a stone stairway which mounted a terrace. She tripped, stumbled and fell against the granite steps.
Rutledge was flying to her before she was fairly prone. He spoke to her and tried to help her up. She made no answer, and her hand and arm were limp.
"Elise!" he said, with fear in his voice. Still no answer.