Warner laughed.
"Don't you ever dance for pleasure?" he asked in English.
She replied in English:
"Is it your theory that it would give me pleasure to dance with you?"
"It is," he said, still laughing. "But by demonstration alone are theories proven."
The girl hesitated, her grey eyes resting on him. Then she turned her head, drew a pencil from her chestnut hair, rapped with it on the counter. A head waiter came speeding to her.
"Aristide, I'm going to dance," she said in the same sweetly indifferent voice. "Have the goodness to sit in my chair until I return or Mélanie arrives."
She slid to the floor from her high seat, came out, through the wire gate, and began to unpin her cambric apron.
The closer view revealed to him her thinness in her black gown. She was not so tall as he had thought her, and she was younger; but he had been right about her cheeks and lips. Both were outrageously painted.
She handed her daintily embroidered apron to the waiter, laid one hand lightly on Warner's arm; he led her to the edge of the dancing floor, clasped her waist and swung her with him out into the noisy whirl beyond.