“Pshaw!––Ralston doesn’t dance,” he bantered. “This is a dandy waltz,––come!”
“But you do dance, Mr. Ralston?” she put in.
“Of course I do!” said Phil, springing up. And, in a moment, they sailed away from him whose very presence tainted the atmosphere for Ralston.
A backward glance showed Brenchfield glooming after them, the fingers of one hand fumbling with the pendant of his watch-chain, the fingers of the other pulling at his heavy, black moustache.
But who had any desire to keep the picture of one such as he in memory, in the new delights that were swarming in on Phil?
He held Eileen Pederstone lightly within the half-hoop of his arm. She was but a floating featherweight. But, ah! the intoxication of it, he could never forget: the violins singing and sighing in splendid harmony and time; the perfume of the lady’s presence; the soft, sweet, white, living, swaying loveliness; the feeling of abandonment to the pleasure of the moment that enveloped him from his partner’s happy heart. Great God!––and Phil a young man in the first flush of his manhood, exiled from the presence of womanhood for five years, shut away from the refining of their influence and in all that time never to have felt the charm of a woman’s voice, the delight of a woman’s happy laugh, never to have felt the thrill of the touch of a woman’s hand;––and suddenly to be released at the very Gates of Heaven: little wonder he was dumb, sightless and deaf to all else but the bewitchment of the waltz.
Phil thought he had forgotten the way, but, ah! how they danced as they threaded their way through and 157 round. No one touched them; none stopped the swing, rhythm and beat of their movements.
Once Eileen spoke to him, but he did not comprehend. She looked up into his face and, as he gazed down into her eyes, he thought she must have understood his feelings, for she did not attempt conversation again.
He was as a soul without a body, soaring in the vastnesses of the heavens, in harmony and unison with the great and perfect God-created spirit world of which he formed an infinitesimal but perfect and necessary part.
Gradually, and all too soon, alas!––for it seemed to him that they had hardly started––the music slowed and softened till it died away in a whisper, and he was awakened to his surroundings by the sudden burst of applause from the dancers on every side of them.