"You mustn't go, and you mustn't for a moment think you've disturbed me. I haven't any business to be in here anyway, because I think I was invited to entertain and be entertained like any respectable guest. I don't know what they do to unmannerly, unsociable creatures who sneak off for a book and a smoke from the scenes of revelry, but I'm guilty, and deserve to die the death, or whatever it is."
Nancy laughed. When he talked he had a droll way of wrinkling up his forehead, and then suddenly breaking into a beaming, mischievous grin, like a schoolboy.
"I'm guilty, too."
"Yes,—and really ever so much more so than I am; because you're deliberately robbing at least ninety-nine per cent. of the guests of a part of their evening's pleasure, whereas, my absence is of so little importance one way or the other that, although I've been in here the better part of an hour already, there hasn't been even a whimper of protest. It's been decidedly injurious to my amour-propre. I had hoped, when you came in, that you had been sent by the unanimous vote of all present to request my immediate return to the regions of festivity. I was prepared to be coy—but not adamantine. Imagine my chagrin and dismay when it gradually dawned on me not only that you hadn't come for any such flattering purpose, but even that you hadn't the smallest notion I was here. As far as you were concerned I was of less significance than a cockroach."
"But that's not bad—a cockroach would be of awful significance to me," said Nancy, with a laugh.
"We have caught each other red-handed in an overwhelming breach of manners," continued he, severely. "But then, look at it this way—here we are, each having a good time in our own way. Now it seems to me that a hostess could ask no more of a guest than that he find his own entertainment—if he seeks it by ambling out into the garden to weed up wild onions, why, well and good——"
"You are only trying to dazzle me with a false argument in self-defense," said Nancy.
"You should be grateful to me for furnishing such a good one, since you've need of one yourself, ma'am. But if you don't like it, why then I shall change my mind. As a matter of fact, the idea of dancing has suddenly appealed to me very strongly—since Providence has at last provided me with a—well, with a more delightful partner than I should have dared to hope for. And they are playing a very charming waltz. Will you dance with me?"
He made a graceful little old-fashioned bow, and offered her his arm. Then he smiled.
"I—I haven't introduced myself yet. Do you mind? I should have done it in the beginning, but I couldn't think of any graceful way of hinting at my name, and it's so horribly clumsy just to say pointblank, 'My name's George Arnold. What's yours?'"