But it was Edington’s words to Stillman while they stood waiting for the hotel attendants to prepare the table that brought a quickened beat to her heart.  The conversation was low and not meant for her ears, but her senses were too sharpened to miss Edington’s furtive words as he whispered to Stillman: 

“Where did ... amazing....  Miss Robson?”

Claire did not catch the reply which must have also been something of a query, but she heard Edington continue.

“Well ... a little too silent, I must admit....  No, I don’t dislike ’em that way ... but I’m afraid of them.”

Stillman answered with a low laugh.

They sat down.  Edington ordered wine.  The crowd at the tables was rather a mixed one.  There was plenty of elaborate gowning among the groups of formal diners who had prolonged their feasting into the supper hour, but many casuals, drifting in for a few drinks and a dance or two, robbed the scene of its earlier brilliance.

The orchestra struck up a one-step.  Claire denied Stillman the dance, explaining that she knew none of the new steps, and he whirled away with Mrs. Condor.  Edington, robbed of his chance, pouted unashamed.

“I say, Miss Robson, can’t you do a one-step—­really?  There isn’t anything to it!  Come on—­try; I’ll pull you through.”

Claire’s knowledge of dancing was instinctive, but not a matter of much practice, yet his distress was so comic that she relented.  She wondered if he could feel her trembling as they swung into the dance.  She stumbled once or twice from timidity, but Edington guided unerringly.  Half-way round she suddenly struck the proper swing.

“There—­that’s it,” cried Edington, enthusiastically.  “Now you’ve got it!  Fine!”

His praise mounted to her brain like a heady wine, and suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, all the repressed youth within her awoke with a sweet and terrible joy....  They danced madly, perfectly, the rhythm entering into them like something at once fluid and flaming.  Her ecstasy awoke a vague response in her partner, who bent forward as he kept repeating, monotonously: 

“And you said you couldn’t, Miss Robson!  Fancy, you said you couldn’t!”

The music stopped abruptly with a crash.  Some of the dancers made their way leisurely back among the tables, but the most of them wandered about the polished’ floor, clapping insistent hands for an encore.  In this brief interlude, groups arrived and departed.  The musicians lifted their instruments to chin and lip, struck an opening chord; couples began to whirl and glide.  Claire Robson, palpitant and eager, followed Edington’s lead, but almost at the first moment of their rhythmic flight they came crashing into the overcoated bulk of a man cutting across the corner of the ballroom in an attempt at a swift exit.  A smothered protest escaped Edington, and Claire detached herself from her partner long enough to see the offender bow very low and hear his apology in a voice and manner that seemed curiously familiar: