"Come along, young man," she said.
"I'm afraid I don't know how."
"Then I'll teach you."
"But—"
"Don't be afraid of me. I've got a son as old as you, and I taught him."
Forbes had danced at times with elderly women, but not such a dance as this. It was uncanny to be holding in his arms the mother of a grown man, and to be whirling madly, dipping and toppling like wired puppets.
Mrs. Neff's spirit was still a girl's. Her body felt as young and lissome in his arms as a girl's. Her abandon and frivolity were of the seminary period. Now and then he had to glance down at the white hair of the hoyden to reassure himself. The music had the power of an incantation; it had bewitched her back to youth. It seemed to Forbes that this magic alone, which should turn old women back to girlhood for a time, could not be altogether accursed.
Perhaps the music had unsettled his reason, but in the logic of the moment he felt that there was a splendid value in the new fashion, which broke down at the same time the barriers of caste and the walls of old age.
It was the Saturnalia come back. The aristocrats mingled as equals with the commoners, and the old became young again for yet a few hours.
He had read so much about the cold, the haughty, and the bored-to-death society of New York, yet here he was, a young lieutenant from the frontier, and he was dancing a breakdown with one of the most important matrons in America. And she was cutting up like a hired girl at a barn-dance. Plainly the nation was still a republic.