“No good wasting time on them.”

“Then let’s stop on here till it’s time to milk the cows.”

“Pre-Catelan?  But there’s Maxim’s left—­”

“Only another tourist show nowadays.  And frightfully rowdy.”

“Sounds like the lot I’m after.  Come along.”

She shook her head vigorously.  “Shan’t!” His eyebrows rose in mute enquiry.  “Because I don’t want to,” she explained with childlike candour.  “I’m tired of being dragged around and plied with drink.  Do you realise I’ve had as much as two and a half glasses of champagne to-night, out of the countless bottles you’ve ordered?  Well, I have, and they’re doing their work:  I feel the spirit of independence surging in my midst.  I mutiny and defy you!” A peal of laughter rewarded the instinctive glance with which he sought to judge how far he was justified in taking her seriously.  “Not only that, but you’re neglecting me.  I want to dance, and you haven’t asked me in fully half an hour; and you’re a heavenly dancer—­and so am I!” She thrust back her end of their wall table and rose.  “If you please, monsieur.”

One could hardly resent such charming impertinence.  Lanyard drew a long face of mock patience, sighed an heroic sigh, and followed her through the huddled tables to the dancing floor.  A bewildering look rewarded him as they swung into the first movement of a tango.

“Do you know you are a dangerous man, Monsieur Paul Martin?”

“Oh, mademoiselle!”

“Such fortitude, such forbearance—­when I ought to be slapped—­enchants, disarms, makes me remember I am a woman, foredoomed always to yield.  I abjure my boasted independence, monsieur, I submit.  It shall be as you wish:  on to Maxim’s—­after this one dance.  You know, it’s the last really good music we’ll have to dance to—­our last dance together, perhaps—­who knows?—­forever!”

She pretended to be overcome; the lithe body in his embrace sketched a fugitive seizure of sadness, drooping with a wistful languour well suited to the swooning measures to which they swayed and postured.

His hand was pressed convulsively.  She seemed momentarily about to become a burden in his grasp, yet ever to recover just on the instant of failing, buoyed up by the steely resilience of her lithe and slender body.  Impossible to say how much was pretence, how much impulsive confession of true feeling!  Perplexed, perturbed, Lanyard gazed down into that richly tinted face which, with eyes half-curtained and lips half-parted, seemed to betray so much, yet to his next glance was wholly illegible and provoking.  Aware that with such women man’s vanity misleads him woefully, and aware that she was equally awake to this masculine weakness, he wondered, afraid even to guess, telling himself he were an ass to believe, a fool to deny....

Then suddenly he saw her lashes sweep up to unveil eyes at once mirthful and admonitory; her hungry mouth murmured incongruously an edged warning.  “Play up, Paul—­play up to me!  We dance too well together not to be watched; and if I’m not mistaken, someone you’re interested in has just come in.  No:  don’t look yet, just remember we’re madly enamoured, you and I—­and don’t care a rap who sees it.”