He had not spoken to Marise that evening, save the first greetings, and his impudent shout to her in the dance, and now turned to find her.  On the other side of the room she was installed, looking extraordinarily young and girl-like, between Mr. Welles and Mr. Bayweather, fanning first one and then the other elderly gentleman and talking to them with animation.  They were both in need of fanning, puffing and panting hard.  Mr. Welles indeed was hardly recognizable, the usual pale quiet of his face broken into red and glistening laughter.

“I see you’ve been dancing,” said Vincent, coming to a halt in front of the group and wishing the two old gentlemen in the middle of next week.

“Old Mrs. Powers got me,” explained Mr. Welles.  “You never saw anything so absurd in your life.”  He went on to the others, “You simply can’t imagine how remarkable this is, for me.  I never, never danced and I no more thought I ever would . . .”

Mr. Bayweather ran his handkerchief around and around his neck in an endeavor to save his clerical collar from complete ruin, and said, panting still, “Best thing in the world for you, Mr. Welles.”

“Yes indeed,” echoed Marise.  “We’ll have to prescribe a dance for you every week.  You look like a boy, and you’ve been looking rather tired lately.”  She had an idea and added, accusingly, “I do believe you’ve gone on tormenting yourself about the Negro problem!”

“Yes, he has!” Mr. Bayweather unexpectedly put in.  “And he’s not the only person he torments about it.  Only yesterday when he came down to the rectory to see some old deeds, didn’t he expatiate on that subject and succeed in spoiling the afternoon.  I had never been forced to think so much about it in all my life.  He made me very uncomfortable, very!  What’s the use of going miles out of your way, I say, out of the station to which it has pleased God to place us?  I believe in leaving such insoluble problems to a Divine Providence.”

Marise was evidently highly amused by this exposition of one variety of ministerial principle, and looked up at Vincent over her fan, her eyes sparkling with mockery.  He savored with an intimate pleasure her certainty that he would follow the train of her thought; and he decided to try to get another rise out of the round-eyed little clergyman.  “Oh, if it weren’t the Negro problem, Mr. Bayweather, it would be free-will or predestination, or capital and labor.  Mr. Welles suffers from a duty-complex, inflamed to a morbid degree by a life-long compliance to a mediaeval conception of family responsibility.”

Mr. Bayweather’s eyes became rounder than ever at this, and Vincent went on, much amused, “Mr. Welles has done his duty with discomfort to himself so long that he has the habit.  His life at Ashley seems too unnaturally peaceful to him.  I’d just as soon he took it out with worrying about the Negroes.  They are so safely far away.  I had been on the point of communicating to him my doubts as to the civic virtues of the Martians, as a safety valve for him.”