“It’s going to be a delicious German—­can’t you tell by the feel?” began Sharlee, doing the march with a deux-temps step.  “I’m so glad to see you, for it seems ages since we met, though, you know, it was only last week.  Is not that a nice speech for greeting?  Only I must tell you that I’ve said it to four other men already, and the evening is yet young.”

“Is there nothing in all the world that you can say, quite new and special, for me?”

“Oh, yes!  For one thing your partner to-night is altogether the loveliest thing I ever saw.  And for another—­”

“I am listening.”

“For another, her partner to-night is quite the nicest man in all this big, big room.”

“And how many men have you said that to to-night, here in the youth of the evening?”

But the figure had reached that point where the paths of partners must diverge for a space, and at this juncture Sharlee whirled away from him.  Around and up the room swept the long file of low-cut gowns and pretty faces, and step for step across the floor moved a similar line of swallow-tail and masculinity.  At the head of the room the two lines curved together again, round meeting round, and here, in good time, the lovely billow bore on Sharlee, who slipped her little left hand into West’s expectant right with the sweetest air in the world.

“Nobody but you, Charles Gardiner West,” said she.

The whistle blew; the music changed; and off they went upon the dreamy valse.

There are dancers in this world, and other dancers; but Sharlee was the sort that old ladies stop and watch.  Of her infinite poetry of motion it is only necessary to say that she could make even “the Boston” look graceful; as witness her now.  In that large room, detectives could have found men who thought Sharlee decidedly prettier than Miss Avery.  Her look was not languorous; her voice was not provocative; her eyes were not narrow and tip-tilted; they did not look dangerous in the least, unless you so regard all extreme pleasure derived from looking at anything in the nature of eyes.  Nor was there anything in the least businesslike, official, or stenographic about her manner.  If her head bulged with facts about the treatment of the deficient classes, no hint of that appeared in her talk at parties.  Few of the young men she danced with thought her clever, and this shows how clever she really was.  For there are men in this world who will run ten city blocks in any weather to avoid talking to a woman who knows more than they do, and knows it, and shows that she knows that she knows it.

Charles Gardiner West looked down at Sharlee; and the music singing in his blood, and the measure that they trod together, was all a part of something splendid that belonged to them alone in the world.  Another man at such a moment would have contented himself with a pretty speech, but West gave his sacred confidence.  He told Sharlee about the presidency of Blaines College.