Big Bob Fielding and Winifred Mather set out at once in close embrace.
"Look at 'em! Look at 'em!" Ten Eyck chortled. "They're grappled like two old-time battleships on a heavy sea." Ten Eyck was the great-great-grandson of one of the first commissioned officers in the American navy, a rival even of Paul Jones. So now his comment was nautical. "Bob and Winifred remind me of the Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis. And Winifred is like old John Paul Jones: when everybody else is dead her motto is: 'I've just begun to fight.'"
But Alice could not smile. She folded her hands and sighed. "It's awful to be a widow when they play that tango."
Persis provided for her at once. "Murray, you take Alice out and dance with her."
Ten Eyck saluted. "Come on, Alice, we'll go in for the consolation stakes."
Alice protested: "But we can't leave you alone."
Persis beckoned to a lonesome-looking acquaintance at another table, and he came to her with wings outstretched. She locked pinions with him, and they were away.
Ten Eyck put his arms up like racks; Alice hung herself across them, and they romped away. As they performed it, the dance was as harmless as a game of tag.
As Persis was twirled past Forbes now and again, her eyes would meet his with a gaze of deep inquiry.
And he was thinking so earnestly of her that at some indefinitely later period he was almost surprised to find that Mrs. Neff was in his arms, and that they were footing it intricately through a restless maze. He realized, also, that he had not spoken to her yet. He cast about in his mind for a topic of conversation, as one whips a dark trout-pool, and brought up a question: