Laughingly, they started to dance. Almost of equal height, faces on a level, their breath mingled in a single stream. Their bodies swayed to the rhythmic breeze of a waltz. Radio music this time. Dance orchestra from the Drake Hotel, Chicago. And although unromantically canned, most peppy and enticing; vitamins intact. As she and Alexis swung by Ellen, Anne caught her amused smile. Sitting between Gerald, who was smoking furiously, and Caldenas, doing nothing at all in his usual cherubic fashion, she appeared serenely malicious, like some complaisant goddess of the senses.
Anne shivered and drew closer to Alexis. His clasp tightened tempestuously about the slim, ungirdled body. He danced her out into the hall. Swooping into a remote corner, he stopped abruptly, and pressed his lips upon hers. The Sparkling eyes were so close that she felt as if she were being sucked into the expanded pupils, as into a bottomless whirlpool. She went pale and a little giddy.
“What is the matter with you to-night, Alexis?” she whispered as they started to dance again.
His lashes swept her forehead like a caress. He did not reply but continued to look into her eyes with the same disturbing gaze. Holding her as in a vise, their limbs interlocked, merged, in rapturous fusion. Stabbing weakness pierced Anne.
“Don’t,” she supplicated faintly.
Muffled against her hair, his laugh rumbled dizzily through her head. His lips brushed her cheek, mumbling softly at the pink lobe of her ear.
“I don’t think I like you to-night!” Her whisper was breathless.
The sardonic laughter was repeated. The eyes fixed upon hers flared hotly. Anne was afraid. As they whirled giddily back into the noisy room, she welcomed with relief the announcement of supper.
They all trooped into the dining room and seated themselves as they pleased at small tables, which lent the vast room the festive air of a récherché little restaurant. Varicolored bowls of copper-hued tulips with glass candlesticks to match adorned each table, sounding a rich note against the gray tempera walls. Adroitly shed by Anne, Alexis discovered himself between a young Roumanian noblewoman, almost as beautiful as Queen Marie in her prime, and a well-known authoress, whose Savonarola profile stared austerely beneath close-cropped hair. Opposite sat a young nondescript, one of those indispensable stop-gaps whose white shirt-fronts fill the social vacuum so perfectly.
The young countess was, according to the society column, decidedly vivacious. This was her first visit to the United States, and she was collecting scalps as well as impressions. Alexis’ golden mane was not to be disdained. She courted him assiduously all through supper and he made contemptuously free response. The honey-colored hair, the sweet-scented body intrigued him very little. He knew that he could have her with a single gesture from his famous fingers. He had met her kind before, a little less beautiful perhaps, certainly more blatant, but equally voracious of sensation. A liaison with Alexis Petrovskey or any other famous artist would furnish welcome tidbit for dainty jaws.