"Oh, in Heaven's name, are you mad? Or do you think I am? Mrs. Neff's room adjoins mine. She could hear the softest whisper."
"Then let Willie Enslee lock us out."
She saw that he was in a frenzy. He had the bit in his teeth. He would bolt in a moment. She thought hard and swiftly. Then she said:
"There's just one way. When I was playing chambermaid to-day I wandered about and found the servant's stairway in the service wing. It leads down into the kitchen. We could get from there into the dining-room and the drawing-room. There's a great window there—well cut off from view. I don't think Willie or anybody would see us there. Listen for Willie's door, and when he has gone down into the front hall, slip out and tiptoe down the service stairs to the kitchen and wait for me there. Will you?"
It was a nauseating rôle to play; but he was bent upon making a last appeal to her before they returned to town on the morrow. He whispered his assent to the elaborate deceit, and made a whirlwind of the last measures of the tune, "Dancing with the devil; oh, the little Devil! dancing at the Devil's ball!"
And then he and Persis, dizzy on the swirling floor, reeled to chairs and sat gasping for breath. Mrs. Neff, passing on Willie's arm, urged Forbes to give Alice the next dance, and he obeyed, surrendering Persis to Enslee, who was so elate with triumph that only the braggart pomp of the tango could express him.
Alice was lonely and forlorn, and so much in Forbes' mood that they were unintentional parodies on each other. Forbes remembered his talk with Senator Tait, and, feeling that Alice was desperately in need of comfort, told her the whole conversation. If she resented the discussion of her affairs and her mother's plans, she kept silent; but when he told her that Senator Tait had vowed to help her defeat Mrs. Neff's match-making plot by giving Stowe Webb a position she became a mænad of joy. She italicized every other word, and declared herself insanely grateful. She declared now that she simply idolized the Senator, and had always thought him the most adorable of men in every respect except the quality of husband.
"I'm afraid he won't give Mr. Webb much of a salary to begin with," Forbes said, to moderate her fantastic hopes.
"Oh, I don't care how little it is," Alice panted, "so long as it's enough for us two to live on, if we have to live in a Harlem flat eleven stories high and no elevator!"
She made so startling a contrast with Persis that Forbes regretted thinking her shallow and hysterical. Under her volatile explosiveness was evidently a deep store of loyalty, as under Persis' reposeful manner was a shifty uncertainty, a terror of consequences. "Still waters run deep" was plainly as fallible as any other proverb, for very shallow ponds may lie very calm, and very spluttering geysers may come from far underground.