The sensation returned, overpowering, when they joined the crowd in the restaurant. She could only follow Louise's insouciant progress through a bewildering medley of voices, music, brilliant lights, and stumble into a chair at a table ringed with strange faces. Momma was there, her hat dripping with plumes, white furs flung negligently over her shoulders, her fingers a blaze of rings. There was another resplendent woman, named Nell Allan; a bald-headed fat man called Bob; a younger man, with a lean face and restless blue eyes, hailed by Louise as Duddy. They were having a very gay time, but Helen, shrinking unnoticed in her chair, was unaccountably isolated and lonely. She could think of nothing to say. There was no thread in the rapid chatter at which she could clutch. They were all talking, and every phrase seemed a flash of wit, since they all laughed so much.
"I love the cows and chickens, but this is the life!" Duddy cried at intervals. "Oh, you chickens!" and "This is the life!" the others responded in a chorus of merriment. Helen did not doubt that it all meant something, but her wits were too slow to grasp it, and the talk raced on unintelligibly. She could only sit silent eating delicate food from plates that waiters whisked into place and whisked away again, and laughing uncertainly when the others did.
Color and light and music beat upon her brain. About her was a confusion of movement, laughter, clinking glasses, glimpses of white shoulders and red lips, perfumes, hurrying waiters, steaming dishes, and over and through it all the quick, accented rhythm of the music, swaying, dominating, blending all sensations into one quickening vibration.
Suddenly, from all sides, hidden in the artificial foliage that covered the walls, silvery bells took up the melody. Helen, inarticulate and motionless, felt her nerves tingle, alive, joyful, eager.
There was a pushing back of chairs, and she started. But they were only going to dance. Duddy and momma, Bob and Mrs. Allan, swept out into a whirl of white arms and dark coats, tilted faces and swaying bodies. "Isn't it lovely!" Helen murmured.
But Louise was not listening. She sat mutinous, her fingers tapping time to the music, her eyes beneath the long lashes searching the room. "I can't help it. I just got to dance!" she muttered, and suddenly she was gone. Some one met her among the tables, put his arms around her, and whirled her away. Helen, watching for her black hat and happy face to reappear, saw that she was dancing with the man whose telegram had introduced them. Memory finally gave her his name. Gilbert Kennedy.
Louise brought him to the table when the music ceased. There were gay introductions, and Helen wished that she could say something. But momma monopolized him, squeezing in an extra chair for him beside her, and saying how glad she was to meet a friend of her little girl's.
Helen could only be silent, listening to their incomprehensible gaiety, and feeling an attraction for him as irresistible as an electric current. She did not know what it was, but she thought him the handsomest man she had ever seen, and she felt that he did whatever he wanted to do with invariable success. He was not like the others. He talked their jargon, but he did not seem of them, and she noticed that his hazel eyes, set in a network of tiny wrinkles, were at once avid and weary. Yet he could not be older than twenty-eight or so. He danced with momma, when again the orchestra began a rag, but coming back to the table with the others, he said restlessly:
"Let's go somewhere else. My car's outside. How about the beach?"
"Grand little idea!" Duddy declared amid an approving chorus. Helen, following the others among the tables and through the swinging doors to the curb where the big gray car stood waiting, told herself that she must make an effort, must pay for this wonderful evening with some contribution to the fun. But when they had all crowded into the machine and she felt the rush of cool air against her face and saw the street lights speeding past, she forgot everything but joy. She was having a good time at last, and a picture of the Masonville girls flashed briefly through her mind. How meager their picnics and hay rides appeared beside this!