"Can't you let it go?" asked the lawyer, sharply.
His tone awakened his friend's scrutiny. "What's the matter?" he asked. "How long do you want me?"
"It may be some time," answered Ainsworth. "I wish you would come immediately."
Maud Morris smiled full upon the lawyer and forced him to meet her glorious eyes.
"Just one round," she pleaded prettily, with a nod towards the ballroom.
At that moment Ainsworth was transformed, in his own mind, into the grim master of life. The other two were the trifling, wayward children to whom chastisement would presently come. It did not matter if, in their ignorance, they coveted those few turns together; they could have their gambols just on the eve of disillusionment! It might help the cure of Britton's malady when Ainsworth would afterwards remind him of the incident.
"By all means," he said sarcastically. "It will satisfy these sticklers."
They swept merrily into the adjacent ballroom, and Ainsworth followed as far as the entrance. The occasion struck him with a certain grim humor, and he chuckled silently as he stood in the alcove watching the couple circling to the orchestra's music.
They floated slowly, as in a delightful dream, round the immense and gorgeously-decorated salon, the woman looking upward ecstatically, with her face aquiver with light, and whispering with both lips and eyes. Britton, oblivious to the irony of the situation, had forgotten even Ainsworth. He was plunged in the joy of the moment, and the watching lawyer could imagine what words he was murmuring in the meshes of her hair.
Then, in the midst of his ironical judgment, a pang of something nearly akin to pity moved Ainsworth. For an instant he debated with himself the issue if this amour should prove genuine on both sides, but the thought was immediately dismissed by his cynical reasoning as improbable. The man was in earnest, but the woman was a siren, in Ainsworth's critical view.