When the preliminary part was over, the music changed and again the men broke out into their accompanying chant.  This time it ran,

“The gent around the lady
and
The lady around the gent.
Then
The lady around the lady
and
The gent around the gent.”

Somewhere in the hypnotic to-and-fro of those swaying, poised, alert human figures, he encountered Marise, coming on her suddenly, and finding her standing stock-still.

“Around me!” she commanded, imperatively, nodding and laughing.  “Just as the song says.”

“The gent around the lady,”

sang the men.

Frank was circling about Nelly, his eyes on hers, treading lightly, his tall body apparently weighing no more than thistle-down.  It was as though he were weaving a charm.

Vincent ended his circle.

The men sang, “And the lady round the gent.”

Marise and Nelly stepped off, overlaying the men’s invisible circle with one of their own.

The room beyond boiled with the dervish-like whirling of the dancers.  The fiddle rose louder and shriller, faster and faster.  The men sang at the tops of their voices, and beat time heavily.  Under cover of this rolling clamor, Vincent called out boldly to Marise, “A symbol of life!  A symbol of our life!” and did not know if she heard him.

“Then
The lady around the lady.”

Nelly and Marise circled each other.

“And
The gent around the gent.”

He and Frank followed them.

His head was turning, the room staggered around him.  Nelly’s warm, vibrant hand was again in his.  They were in their places.  Frank’s voice rose, resounding, “Promenade all!”

Nelly abandoned herself to his arms, in the one brief moment of close physical contact of the dance.  They raced to the end of the room.

The music stopped abruptly, but it went on in his head.

The odor of pines rose pungent in the momentary silence.  Everyone was breathing rapidly.  Nelly put up a hand to touch her hair.  Vincent, reflecting that he would never acquire the native-born capacity for abstaining from chatter, said, because he felt he must say something, “What a pleasant smell those pine-branches give.”

She turned her white neck to glance into the small room lined with the fragrant branches, and remarked, clearly and dispassionately, “I don’t like the smell.”

Vincent was interested.  He continued, “Well, you must have a great deal of it, whether you like it or not, from that great specimen by your front door.”

She looked at him calmly, her eyes as blue as precious stones.  “The old pine-tree,” she said, “I wish it were cut down, darkening the house the way it does.”  She spoke with a sovereign impassivity, no trace of feeling in her tone.  She turned away.

Vincent found himself saying almost audibly, “Oh ho!” He had the sensation, very agreeable to him, of combining two clues to make a certainty.  He wished he could lay his hands on a clue to put with Marise Crittenden’s shrinking from the photograph of the Rocca di Papa.