“Balance to corners, left!”

The same movement was executed to the other side.

“First couple forward and back!” shouted Frank.

Marise and ’Gene advanced, hand in hand, to meet the old clergyman and the little girl.  They met in the middle, poised an instant on the top wave of rhythm and stepped back, every footfall, every movement, their very breathing, in time to the beat-beat-beat of the fiddle’s air which filled the room as insistently as the odor of the pines.

Mrs. Powers nodded her white head to it and tapped her foot.  Marsh had not ventured to remove his eyes from the weaving interplay of the dancers in his own set.  Now, for an instant, he glanced beyond them into the next room.  He received an impression of rapid, incessant, intricate shifting to and fro, the whole throng of dancers in movement as swift and disconcerting to the eyes as the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope.  It made him literally dizzy to see it, and he turned his eyes back to his own set.

The air changed, but not the rhythm, and all the men broke out in a hoarse chant, singing to a whirring, rapid tune,

     “Oh, pass right through and never mind who
       And leave the girl behind you. 
     Now come right back on the same old track
       And swing the girl behind you!”

In obedience to these chanted commands, the four who were executing the figure went through labyrinthine manoeuvers, forward and back, dividing and reuniting.  The old clergyman held out his hand to Mrs. Crittenden, laughing as he swung her briskly about.  ’Gene bent his great bulk solemnly to swing his own little daughter.  Then with neat exactitude, on the stroke of the beat, they were all back in their places.

“Second couple forward and back!” sang out Frank, prolonging the syllables in an intoned chant like a muezzin calling from a tower.  Vincent felt himself being pushed and shoved by Mrs. Powers through the intricate figure.

     “Now come right back on the same old track
       And swing the girl behind you!”

The men shouted loudly, stamping in time, with such a relish for the beat of the rhythm that it sang itself through to the motor-centers and set them throbbing.  Vincent found himself holding Nelly Powers at arm’s length and swinging her till his head whirled.  She was as light as sea-foam, dreamy, her blue eyes shining.

“Grand right and left!” shouted Frank.

Vincent’s hand was seized by the little Powers girl.  She swung him competently and passed him on to her mother, who swam past him like a goddess, a golden aroma of health and vivid sensual seduction trailing from her as she moved.

Then it was Marise’s hand in his . . . how strange, how strange . . . that hand which knew the secrets of Debussy’s heart. . . .  She grasped his fingers firmly and looked at him full, laughingly, her face as open as a child’s . . . the many-sided tantalizing creature!  She pulled him about and was gone.