“Don’t you dance?”
The engineer pretended to be scandalized at the suggestion. Where could he have learned the modern steps? The only ones he knew were those of the Chilian “cueca” that his peons always danced on pay days, or the “pericon” and the “gato” as danced by some old gaucho to the clatter of his spurs.
“So, I shall have to sit here! That’s what happens when I go out with three men.... I never saw anything so ridiculous!”
But, as though he had heard what she was saying, a young man came towards their table, a young dancer whom they had often seen at well-known dancing palaces. Torre made a gesture of annoyance. The fact that he had heard Elena express her admiration of the dancer had been enough to arouse his dislike.
The youth enjoyed a certain celebrity. Someone had ironically indicated to what heights of glory he had attained by calling him “the tango-god.” Robledo guessed from the smallness of his feet, always encased in high-heeled shoes, and the brilliance of his thick hair, as black as Chinese laquer, that he was a South American.
This “tango-god” who allowed his partners to pay for the dances they had with him—or so those envious of his celebrity whispered—had no difficulty in persuading Elena to accompany him to the dance floor.
Several times she came back to her place to rest, but in a few minutes her eyes would begin following the dancer, and he, as though conscious of an inaudible summons, made haste to seek her out again.
Meanwhile Torre Bianca was not concealing his disgust. Fontenoy appeared impassive and smiled absently in those intervals Elena spent with them. But Robledo remembered the absent-minded gestures he had observed among people who have a promissory note soon falling due....
He looked more attentively at the banker, who seemed absorbed in the thought of distant things. But little by little Elena’s persistence in dancing with the young South American had induced on his face an expression of annoyance quite as marked as her husband’s. Yet, invariably, as she passed by in her partner’s arms, she smiled mischievously at Fontenoy, as though his air of disgust delighted her.
Robledo, sitting between the two, thought to himself,