The once world-victorious rhapsody had almost a dirge-like tameness now; but it brought Willie to his feet, and he began to circle the room with Persis. She drooped over his inferior shoulders like a wilted flower.
Ten Eyck scooped Alice off the floor and danced in double time. Forbes bowed to Winifred, but she waved him away with a heavy hand. Mrs. Neff beckoned him.
"I'd rather be second choice than a wallflower. That music takes me back a thousand years."
She glided with an old-time dignity. Forbes tried to keep his eyes from Persis and heed Mrs. Neff's reminiscences.
"Waltzes, waltzes!" she wailed. "How much they meant once to me. There are no dances like the old dances."
"There never were," said Forbes. "I reckon that twenty years from now old folks will be shaking their heads and telling how sweet and dignified the turkey-trot was compared with the epileptic crawl and the hydrophobia skedaddle they'll be doing then."
"I reckon so," said Mrs. Neff. "I can just remember when the polka was considered immoral."
Other waltzes were played, but Willie's appetite for them was quenched after the first. He sank into a chair by the living-room table and took up a story in an old magazine.
Persis waltzed with Forbes more often than with the others; but Willie never knew. In fact, it was not long before his head grew heavier and heavier, and finally, with his chin in his necktie, he slept.
The dancing, the copious wine, and the sudden warmth of the weather soon led to the opening of doors. From the music-room one stepped out into a kind of cloister opening on the lawn.