It was Thornton Hammerdyke.
“You see I procured the invitation, and here I am. Where is your programme?”
He took her card attached with its bit of silk to her fan, and scribbled recklessly.
“You have nearly filled it all up!” she exclaimed.
“Naturally,” he replied. “Let us dance out the fag-end of this.”
She took his arm gaily, and with him entered the whirl of dancers.
“You are looking dazzling to-night,” he said. “What witchery have you to make your eyes so blue and your hair so glorious?”
She shook her head and smiled half inwardly, thinking of Redgrave's late compliment and differentiating it from this. Each man was honest, in his own way.
“I put myself down for all those dances,” he went on, “because there is not a woman in the room fit to look at after you. I couldn't dance with them, and I should have been bored and irritated with standing and watching you dancing with other people. Then we can get away and sit by ourselves.”
“But what are all the men to do, to whom I have to be polite?”