Saddler’s, when they reached there after ten, was crowded with the youth and beauty of the vicinity. Mrs. Carter, who was prepossessing in a ball costume of silver and old rose, expected that Cowperwood would dance with her. And he did, but all the time his eyes were on Berenice, who was caught up by one youth and another of dapper mien during the progress of the evening and carried rhythmically by in the mazes of the waltz or schottische. There was a new dance in vogue that involved a gay, running step—kicking first one foot and then the other forward, turning and running backward and kicking again, and then swinging with a smart air, back to back, with one’s partner. Berenice, in her lithe, rhythmic way, seemed to him the soul of spirited and gracious ease—unconscious of everybody and everything save the spirit of the dance itself as a medium of sweet emotion, of some far-off, dreamlike spirit of gaiety. He wondered. He was deeply impressed.
“Berenice,” observed Mrs. Carter, when in an intermission she came forward to where Cowperwood and she were sitting in the moonlight discussing New York and Kentucky social life, “haven’t you saved one dance for Mr. Cowperwood?”
Cowperwood, with a momentary feeling of resentment, protested that he did not care to dance any more. Mrs. Carter, he observed to himself, was a fool.
“I believe,” said her daughter, with a languid air, “that I am full up. I could break one engagement, though, somewhere.”
“Not for me, though, please,” pleaded Cowperwood. “I don’t care to dance any more, thank you.”
He almost hated her at the moment for a chilly cat. And yet he did not.
“Why, Bevy, how you talk! I think you are acting very badly this evening.”
“Please, please,” pleaded Cowperwood, quite sharply. “Not any more. I don’t care to dance any more.”
Bevy looked at him oddly for a moment—a single thoughtful glance.
“But I have a dance, though,” she pleaded, softly. “I was just teasing. Won’t you dance it with me?