Now she had it off.  Her sleek, gleaming dark head stood poised on her long, thick, white throat.  What a woman!  What she could be in any civilized setting!

She was talking to Nelly Powers now, who had come back and stood facing her in one of those superb poses of hers, her yellow braids heavy as gold.  It was Brunhilda talking to Leonardo da Vinci’s Ste. Anne.  No, heavens no!  Not a saint, a musty, penitential negation like a saint!  Only of course, the Ste. Anne wasn’t a saint either, but da Vinci’s glorious Renaissance stunt at showing what an endlessly desirable woman he could make if he put his mind on it.

“What say, we go in,” suggested Frank, casting away the butt of his cigarette.  “I think I hear old Nate beginning to tune up.”

They opened the door and stepped back, the laughing confusion of their blinking entrance, blinded by the lights, carrying off the first moments of greeting.  In the midst of this, Vincent heard the front door open and, startled to think that anyone else had used that exit, turned his head, and saw with some dismay that ’Gene had followed them in.  How near had he been to them in the black night while they talked of his wife’s mismated beauty?  He walked past them giving no sign, his strong long arms hanging a little in front of his body as he moved, his shoulders stooped apparently with their own weight.  From the dining-room came a sound which Vincent did not recognize as the voice of any instrument he had ever heard:  a series of extraordinarily rapid staccato scrapes, playing over and over a primitively simple sequence of notes.  He stepped to the door to see what instrument was being used and saw an old man with a white beard and long white hair, tipped back in a chair, his eyes half shut, his long legs stretched out in front of him, patting with one thick boot.  Under his chin was a violin, on the strings of which he jiggled his bow back and forth spasmodically, an infinitesimal length of the horse-hair being used for each stroke, so that there was no sonority in the tones.  Vincent gazed at him with astonishment.  He had not known that you could make a violin, a real violin, sound like that.

Old Mrs. Powers said at his elbow, “The first sets are forming, Mr. Marsh.”  She called across to Frank Warner, standing very straight with Nelly Powers’ hand on his arm, “Frank, you call off, wun’t ye?”

Instantly the young man, evidently waiting for the signal, sent out a long clear shout, “First sets fo-orming!”

Vincent was startled by the electrifying quality of the human voice when not hushed to its usual smothered conversational dullness.

“Two sets formed in the living-room!  Two in the dining-room!  One in the far room!” chanted Frank.  He drew a deep breath which visibly swelled his great chest and sang out, resonantly, “Promenade to your places!”

He set the example, marching off through the throng with Nelly by his side.