“What of that?” said Eustace lightly.  “Do you always do what you ought?  What a dull programme!”

Dinah flushed.  “Dull but respectable,” she said, with a touch of spirit.

He laughed.  “But I’m not asking you to do anything very outrageous, and I shouldn’t ask it at all if I didn’t know you wanted to do it.  Besides, you promised.  It’s generally considered the respectable thing to do to keep one’s promises.”

That reached Dinah.  She wavered perceptibly.  “Lady Grace will be so vexed,” she murmured.

He snapped his fingers in careless disdain.

She turned appealingly to Scott.  “I think I might go—­just for one dance, don’t you?”

Scott’s pale eyes met hers with steady comradeship.  “I think I shouldn’t,” he said.

Eustace turned as if he had not heard and strolled to the door.  He opened it, and at once the room was filled with the plaintive alluring strains of waltz-music.  He stood and looked back.  Dinah met the look, and suddenly she was on her feet.

He held out his hand to her with a smile half-mocking, half-persuasive.  The music swung on with a subtle enchantment.  Dinah uttered a little quivering laugh, and went to him.

In another moment the door closed, and they stood alone in the passage.

“I knew you wanted to,” said Eustace, smiling down into her eyes with the arrogance of the conqueror.

Dinah was panting a little as one who had suffered a sudden strain.  “Of course I wanted to,” she returned.  “But that doesn’t make it right.”

He pressed her hand to his heart for a moment, and she caught again a glimpse of that fire in his eyes that had so thrilled her.  She could not meet it.  She stood in palpitating silence.

“Where is the use of fighting against fate?” he asked her softly.  “A gift of the gods is never offered twice.”

She did not understand him, but her heart was beating wildly, tumultuously, and an inner voice urged her to be gone.

She slipped her hand free.  “Aren’t we—­wasting time?” she whispered.

He laughed again in that subtle, half-mocking note, but he met her wish instantly.  They went downstairs to the salon.

There were not so many dancers now.  The de Vignes had evidently retired.  One rapid glance told Dinah this, and she dismissed them therewith from her mind.  The rhythm and lure of the music caught her.  She slid into the dance with delicious abandonment.  The wonder and romance of it had got into her veins.  No stolen pleasure was ever more keenly enjoyed than was that last perfect dance.  Her very blood was a-fire with the strange, intoxicating joy of life.  She wanted to go on for ever.

But it ended at length.  She came to earth after her rapturous flight, and found herself standing with her partner in a curtained recess of the ballroom from which a glass door led on to the verandah that ran round the hotel.