“Meaning you’re not going to dance more than one dance?” he asked.

She opened her laughing eyes wide.  “Why should it mean that?  You’re not the only man in the room, are you?”

Sir Eustace’s jaw set itself suddenly after a fashion that made him look formidable, albeit he laughed back at her with his eyes.  “All right—­Daphne,” he murmured.  “I’ll have the first.”

Dinah’s heart gave a little throb of apprehension, but she quieted it impatiently.  What had she to fear?  She nodded and lightly turned away.

All through dinner she alternately dreaded and longed for the moment of his coming to claim that dance from her.  That haughty confidence of his had struck a curious chord in her soul, and the suspense was almost unbearable.

She noticed that Rose was very serene and smiling, and she regarded her complacency with growing resentment.  Rose could dance as often as she liked with him, and no one would find fault.  Rose had had him all to herself throughout the afternoon moreover.  She knew very well that had the ski-ing lesson been offered to her, she would not have been allowed to avail herself of it.

A wicked little spirit awoke within her.  Why should she always be kept thus in the background?  Surely her right to the joys of life was as great as—­if not greater than—­Rose’s!  With her it would all end so soon, while Rose had the whole of her youth before her like a pleasant garden in which she might wander or rest at will.

Dinah began to feel feverish.  It seemed so imperative that she should miss nothing good during this brief, brief time of happiness vouchsafed her by the gods.

Her frame of mind when she entered the ballroom was curious.  Mutiny and doubt, longing and dread, warred strangely together.  But the moment he came to her, the moment she felt his arm about her, rapture came and drove out all beside.  She drank again of the wine of the gods, drank deeply, giving herself up to it without reservation, too eager to catch every drop thereof to trouble as to what might follow.

He caught her mood.  Possibly it was but the complement of his own.  Freely he interpreted it, feeling her body throb in swift accord to every motion, aware of the almost passionate surrender of her whole being to the delight of that one magic dance.  She was reckless, and he was determined.  If this were to be all, he would take his fill at once, and she should have hers.  Before the dance was more than half through, he guided her out of the labyrinth into the darkly curtained recess that led out to the verandah, and there holding her, before she so much as realized that they had ceased to dance, he gathered her suddenly and fiercely to him and covered her startled, quivering face with kisses.

She made no outcry, attempted no resistance.  He had been too sudden for that.  His mastery was too absolute.  Holding her fast in the gloom, he took what he would, till with a little sob her arms clasped his neck and she clung to him, giving herself wholly up to him.