"Anyone can dance with as good a dancer as you are," she replied sweetly.
He gave her an appreciative glance. "Can they? I guess we could enter for a prize all right."
"We could make some of 'em hustle to beat us," she declared gaily.
"Could you make a getaway some evening, and we'd slip over and try it out at one of the big places?"
"Would you take me?" she cried, delighted. But her face fell. "There won't be time. I'm going back to school."
The talk languished after this disappointment. The number was over and they were seated in a remote corner of the little conservatory. Thorpe wondered what he could find to talk to this kid about.
"Engine completely stalled," he thought ruefully.
On her part, Patricia experienced a sense of dismal vacancy. What was there in her mental repertoire to interest this worldly collegian? The memory of the party at which she had seen him gambling came to mind as a hopeful bridge over the widening conversational chasm.
"Been winning much lately?" she asked brightly.
"Winning?" He looked puzzled. "At what?"