"Oh, mother!" Willie gasped. "I gave her up long ago."
Ten Eyck intervened. Forbes remembered now that he was always intervening between extremists in the club quarrels in Manila.
"What difference does it make?" he said. "All dancing is impure to some people. The waltz and polka used to be considered bad enough to get you kicked out of the churches. The turkey-trot is only vulgar when vulgar people dance it, and they'd be vulgar anyway, anywhere. The trot has set people to jigging again. That's one good, wholesome thing. For several years you couldn't get people to dance at all. Now they're at it morning, noon, and night."
"The police ought to stop it, I tell you," Willie insisted, with a peevishness that was like a dash of vinegar. "I hate to see it."
"Then don't come along, my dear," Persis answered, with a glint of temper.
Forbes did not like that "my dear." It might mean nothing, but it might mean everything.
CHAPTER VI
WHEN the final curtain came down like a guillotine on the play there was a general uprising, a sort of slow panic to escape from this finished place and move on to the next event—by street-car to a welsh rabbit in a kitchenette, or by motor to a restaurant of pretense.
Everybody being in haste, everybody went slowly. Forbes retrieved his hat and overcoat after a ferocious struggle. In the lazy ooze-out of the crowd he was gradually shunted to the side of Persis, and willing enough to be there, proud to be there. He walked a little more militarily than he usually did in civilian's.