“Ah, don’t mention them!  They hurt none the less because we cover them with a smile, eh?  I dare say you know.  You have been in the thick of the fight yourself.  But you did not come here to chat with me, though your manner might lead one to think so.  I will not keep you.”

“I came to see Prince Pavlo,” answered Steinmetz.  “I must thank you for enabling me to do so.  I may not see you again this evening.  My best thanks, my very dear lady.”

He bowed, and with his half-humorous, half-melancholy smile, left her.

The first face he recognized was a pretty one.  Miss Maggie Delafield was just turning away from a partner who was taking his conge, when she looked across the room and saw Steinmetz.  He had only met her once, barely exchanging six words with her, and her frank, friendly bow was rather a surprise to him.  She came toward him, holding out her hand with an open friendliness which this young lady was in the habit of bestowing upon men and women impartially—­upon persons of either sex who happened to meet with her approval.  She did not know what made her incline to like this man, neither did she seek to know.  In a quiet, British way Miss Delafield was a creature of impulse.  Her likes and dislikes were a matter of instinct, and, much as one respects the doctrine of charity, it is a question whether an instinctive dislike should be quashed by an exaggerated sense of neighborly duty.  Steinmetz she liked, and there was an end to it.

“I was afraid you did not recognize me,” she said.

“My life has not so many pleasures that I can afford to forget one of them,” replied Steinmetz, in his somewhat old-fashioned courtesy.  “But an old—­buffer, shall I say?—­hardly expects to be taken much notice of by young ladies at a ball.”

“It is not ten minutes since Paul assured me that you were the best dancer that Vienna ever produced,” said the girl, looking at him with bright, honest eyes.

Karl Steinmetz looked down at her, for he was a tall man when Paul Alexis was not near.  His quiet gray eyes were almost affectionate.  There was a sudden sympathy between these two, and sudden sympathies are the best.

“Will you give an old man a trial?” he asked.  “They will laugh at you.”

She handed him her programme.

“Let them laugh!” she said.

He took the next dance, which happened to be vacant on her card.  Almost immediately the music began, and they glided off together.  Maggie began with the feeling that she was dancing with her own father, but this wore off before they had made much progress through the crowd, and gave way to the sensation that she had for partner the best dancer she had ever met, gray-haired, stout, and middle-aged.

“I wanted to speak to you,” she said.

“Ah!” Steinmetz answered.  He was steering with infinite skill.  In that room full of dancers no one touched Maggie’s elbow or the swing of her dress, and she, who knew what such things meant, smiled as she noted it.