Up ambled Fatty Pfaff, just arrived. Martin pounced on him lovingly. “H’lo, old Fat! You a stag to-night? Meet my friend Miss Tozer.”
Fatty’s bulbous eyes showed approval of Leora’s cheeks and amber hair. He heaved, “Pleasedmeetch—dance starting—have the honor?” in so flattering a manner that Martin could have kissed him.
That he himself stood alone through the dance did not occur to him. He leaned against a pillar and gloated. He felt gorgeously unselfish.... That various girl wallflowers were sitting near him, waiting to be asked, did not occur to him either.
He saw Fatty introduce Leora to a decorative pair of Digams, one of whom begged her for the next. Thereafter she had more invitations than she could take. Martin’s excitement cooled. It seemed to him that she clung too closely to her partners, that she followed their steps too eagerly. After the fifth dance he was agitated. “Course! She’s enjoying herself! Hasn’t got time to notice that I just stand here—yes, by thunder, and hold her scarf! Sure! Fine for her. Fact I might like a little dancing myself— And the way she grins and gawps at that fool Brindle Morgan, the—the—the damnedest— Oh, you and I are going to have a talk, young woman! And those hounds trying to pinch her off me—the one thing I’ve ever loved! Just because they dance better than I can, and spiel a lot of foolishness— And that damn’ orchestra playing that damn’ peppery music— And she falling for all their damn’ cheap compliments and— You and I are going to have one lovely little understanding!”
When she next returned to him, besieged by three capering medics, he muttered to her, “Oh, it doesn’t matter about me!”
“Would you like this one? Course you shall have it!” She turned to him fully; she had none of Madeline’s sense of having to act for the benefit of observers. Through a strained eternity of waiting, while he glowered, she babbled of the floor, the size of the room, and her “dandy partners.” At the sound of the music he held out his arms.
“No,” she said. “I want to talk to you.” She led him to a corner and hurled at him, “Sandy, this is the last time I’m going to stand for your looking jealous. Oh, I know! See here! If we’re going to stick together—and we are!— I’m going to dance with just as many men as I want to, and I’m going to be just as foolish with ’em as I want to. Dinners and those things— I suppose I’ll always go on being a clam. Nothing to say. But I love dancing, and I’m going to do exactly what I want to, and if you had any sense whatever, you’d know I don’t care a hang for anybody but you. Yours! Absolute. No matter what fool things you do—and they’ll probably be a plenty. So when you go and get jealous on me again, you sneak off and get rid of it. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself!”
“I wasn’t jealous— Yes, I was. Oh, I can’t help it! I love you so much. I’d be one fine lover, now wouldn’t I, if I never got jealous!”
“All right. Only you’ve got to keep it under cover. Now we’ll finish the dance.”
He was her slave.