A sort of groan rent Moran.  Miss Hall and the two girls stood before them, cool, smiling, unruffled.

“Miss Cunningham, this is Mr. Tyler Kamps.  Mr. Moran, Miss Cunningham.  Miss Drew—­Mr. Moran, Mr. Kamps.”

The boy and the man gulped, bowed, mumbled something.

“Would you like to dance?” said Miss Cunningham, and raised limpid eyes to Tyler’s.

“Why—­I—­you see I don’t know how.  I just started to—­”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Miss Cunningham interrupted, cheerfully.  “We’ll try it.”  She stood in position and there seemed to radiate from her a certain friendliness, a certain assurance and understanding that was as calming as it was stimulating.  In a sort of daze Tyler found himself moving over the floor in time to the music.  He didn’t know that he was being led, but he was.  She didn’t try to talk.  He breathed a prayer of thanks for that.  She seemed to know, somehow, about those four straight steps and two to the right and two to the left, and four again, and turn-two, turn-four.  He didn’t know that he was counting aloud, desperately.  He didn’t even know, just then, that this was a girl he was dancing with.  He seemed to move automatically, like a marionette.  He never was quite clear about those first ten minutes of his ballroom experience.

The music ceased.  A spat of applause.  Tyler mopped his head, and his hands, and applauded too, like one in a dream.  They were off again for the encore.

Five minutes later he found himself seated next Miss Cunningham in a chair against the wall.  And for the first time since their meeting the mists of agony cleared before his gaze and he saw Miss Cunningham as a tall, slim, dark-haired girl, with a glint of mischief in her eye, and a mouth that looked as if she were trying to keep from smiling.

“Why don’t you?” Tyler asked, and was aghast.

“Why don’t I what?”

“Smile if you want to.”

At which the glint in her eye and the hidden smile on her lips sort of met and sparked and she laughed.  Tyler laughed, too, and then they laughed together and were friends.

Miss Cunningham’s conversation was the kind of conversation that a nice girl invariably uses in putting at ease a jackie whom she has just met at a war recreation dance.  Nothing could have been more commonplace or unoriginal, but to Tyler Kamps the brilliance of a Madame de Stael would have sounded trivial and uninteresting in comparison.

“Where are you from?”

“Why, I’m from Texas, ma’am.  Marvin, Texas.”

“Is that so?  So many of the boys are from Texas.  Are you out at the station or on one of the boats?”

“I’m on the Station.  Yes ma’am.”

“Do you like the navy?”

“Yes ma’am, I do.  I sure do.  You know there isn’t a drafted man in the navy.  No ma’am!  We’re all enlisted men.”

“When do you think the war will end, Mr. Kamps?”