“Miss Westcote is not dancing tonight?”

The voice was at her elbow, and she looked up with a start—­to meet the gaze of M. Raoul.

“Excuse me”—­she wished to explain why she had been startled—­“I did not expect—­”

“To see me here!  It appears that they have given the scene-painter a free ticket, and I assume that it carries permission to dance, provided he does not display in an unseemly manner the patch in the rear of his best tunic.”

He turned his head in a serio-comic effort to stare down his back.  Dorothea admitted to herself that he made a decidedly handsome fellow in his blue uniform with red facings and corded epaulettes; nor does a uniform look any the worse for having seen a moderate amount of service.

“But Mademoiselle was in a—­what do you call it?—­a brown study, which I interrupted.”

“I was wondering why General Rochambeau had, not yet come to speak with me.”

“I can account for it, perhaps; but first you must answer my question, Mademoiselle.  Are you not dancing tonight?”

“That will depend, sir, on whether I am asked or no.”

She said it almost archly, on the moment’s impulse; and, the words out, felt that they were over-bold.  But she did not regret them when her eyes met his.  He was offering his arm, and she found herself joining in his laugh—­a happy, confidential little laugh.  Dorothea cast a nervous glance towards her brother, but Endymion’s back was turned.  She saw that her partner noted the look, and half-defiantly she nodded towards the gallery as the French musicians struck into a jolly jigging quick-step with a crash at every third bar.

“Mais cela me rend folle,” she murmured.

“Do you know the air?  It’s the ‘Bridge of Lodi,’ and we are to dance ‘Britannia’s Triumph’ to it.  Come, Mademoiselle, since the ‘Triumph’ is nicely mixed, let your captive lead you.”

Those were days of reels, poussettes, ladies’ chains, and figure dancing; honest heel-and-toe, hopping and twisting, hands across and down the middle—­an art contemned now, worse than neglected, insulted by the vulgar caricature of “kitchen lancers”; but then seriously practised, delighting the eye, bringing blood to the dancers’ cheeks.  For five minutes and more Dorothea was entirely happy.  M. Raoul—­ himself no mean performer—­tasted, after his first surprise, something of the joy of discovery.  Who could have guessed that this quiet spinster, who, as a rule, held herself and walked so awkwardly, would prove the best partner in the room?  He had not the least doubt of it.  Others danced with more abandonment, with more exuberant vigour—­ “romped” was his criticism—­but none with such elan perfectly restrained, covering precision with grace.  Hands across, cast off and wheel; as their fingers met again he felt the tense nerves, the throb of the pulse beneath the glove.  Her lips were parted, her eyes and whole face animated.  She was not thinking of him, or of anyone; only of the swing and beat of the music, the sway of life and colour, her own body swaying to it, enslaved to the moment and answering no other call.