“Most unwarrantable impertinence!” he stormed to the Scotchman, whom he joined at the door.  “Clapped me on the shoulder quite as if I had been under suspicion for felony.  Almost expected to hear him say, ’My man, you’re wanted.’  I shall demand satisfaction of the cub the instant the dance is over.”

The Scotchman laughed.  “He meant ye no harm.  It’s a trick they have in the States of changing partners.  Watch the game; ye’ll see.”

“And I can take any man’s partner away by simply laying my hand on his shoulder?”

This changed the complexion of things considerably.  The Honorable Percival spent the remainder of the evening laying his hand upon the shoulder of whosoever claimed Bobby for a dance.

It was remarkable with what facility he acquired the new steps.  He knew that he had a good figure and that he carried it with distinction.  The admiring glances that followed his entrance into any public assembly made him pleasantly aware of the fact.  To-night, however, if any of his thoughts turned upon himself, they were but stragglers from the main army that marched in solid file under Bobby’s banner.

During the intervals when he could not dance with her he retired to the loggia, and thought about her.  She was not only the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, but the most adorably responsive.  He likened her poetically to an AEolian harp and himself to the wind.

No one, not even his fond mother, had accepted him so implicitly at his own valuation as Bobby.  Other women frequently insisted upon their own interpretations.  He looked upon this as a form of disloyalty.  Lady Hortense had once decried his taste for Tennyson; that, and her persistent use of a perfume which he disliked had been symbolic to him of a difference in temperament.  Bobby had no predilections for perfumes or poets.  She blindly accepted his judgment of all things, and if she sometimes failed to conform to his wishes, it was through forgetfulness and not opposition.  He gloried in her plasticity; after all, was it not among the chief of feminine virtues?

While he paced the loggia and thus recounted her charms, he became increasingly intolerant of the fact that his AEolian harp was being swept by various winds.  He thirsted for a complete monopoly of her smiles, of all her glances, grave and gay, of the thousand and one little looks and gestures that he had quite unwarrantably come to look upon as his own.

After all, why should he consider his family before himself?  Why should he ever go back to England at all?  It was the most daring thought he had ever had, and for a moment it staggered him.  Lines from “Locksley Hall” began ringing in his ears: 

                                    “...  Oh for some retreat
  Deep in yonder shining-Orient when; my life began to heat: 
  Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
  Breadths of tropic shady, and palms in clusters, Knots of Paradise. 
  There the passions, cramp’d no longer, shall have scope and breathing
        space;
  I will take some savage woman—­”