“Oh, I see,” said Burton. “Well, you'd better try it before the grand march sweeps everything before it.”
As Miller entered the ballroom, Penrose was giving Adele a seat behind a cluster of palms, near the grand piano, around which the German orchestra was grouped. He went straight to her.
“You won't remember me, Miss Adele,” he said, with a smile, “but I'm going to risk speaking to you, anyway.”
She looked up from the bunch of flowers in her lap, and, in a startled, eager sort of way, began to study his face.
“No, I do not,” she said, flushing a little, and yet smiling agreeably.
“Well, I call that a good joke,” Penrose broke in, with a laugh, as he greeted Miller with a familiar slap on the shoulder. “Why, Rayburn, on my word, she hasn't talked of anybody else for the last week, and here she—”
“You are not Rayburn Miller!” Adele exclaimed, and she stood up to give him her hand. “Yes, I have been talking of you, and it seems to me I have a thousand things to say, and oh, so many thanks!”
There was something in this impulsive greeting that gave Miller a delectable thrill all over.
“You were such a little thing the last time I saw you,” he said, almost tenderly. “I declare, you have changed—so, so remarkably.”
She nodded to Penrose, who was excusing himself, and then she said to Miller, “Are you going to dance to-night?”