Kitty and Peter finished their waltz, one of the few round dances of the evening.

“How perfectly you dance, Kitty!  It’s a long time since we’ve had a waltz together.”

The cow-punchers looked at Kitty as if she were not quite flesh and blood.  Such flaxen daintiness, femininty etherealized to angelic perfection, was new to them, but their admiration was like that given to a delicate exotic which, wonderful as it is, one is well pleased to view through the glass of the florist’s window.

Peter was deferentially attentive and zealous to make the Wetmore party have a thoroughly good time, yet he did all these things, as it were, with his eye on the door.  He was not obviously distrait; he was the man of the world, talking, making himself agreeable, “doing his duty,” while his subconsciousness was busy with other matters.  It was rather through telepathy than through any lack of attention paid to her that Kitty realized the state of things, and in proportion to her realization came a feeling of helplessness; it was so new, so unexpected, so cruel.  He seemed drifting away from her on some tide of affairs of the very existence of which she had been unconscious.  Further and further he had drifted, till intelligible speech no longer seemed possible between them.  They said the foolish, empty things that people call out as the boat glides away from the shore, the things that all the world may hear, and in his eyes there was only that smiling kindness.  How had it come about after all these years?  What was it that had first cut the cable that sent him drifting?  What was it?  She must think.  Oh, who could think with that noise!  How silly was their singing as they danced, how uncouth!

    “All dance as pretty as you can,
    Turn your toes and left alleman;
        First gent sashay to the right,
    Now swing the girl you last swung about,
    And now the one that’s cut her out,
        And now the one that’s dressed in white,
    And now the belle of the ball.”

The dancers seemed bitten to the quick with the tarantula of an ecstatic hilarity; their bodies swayed in perfect harmony to the swing of the fiddles and the swell of the chorus.  The most uncouth of them came under the spell of that mad magic.  Their movements, that in the beginning of the dance had been shy and awkward, became almost beautiful; they forgot arms, hands, feet; their bodies had become like the strings of some skilfully played instrument, obediently responsive to rhythm, and in that composite blending of races each in his dancing brought some of the poetry of his own far land.  The scene was amazing in its beauty and simplicity, like the strong, inspirational power and rugged rhythm of some old border minstrel.  One by one the dancers glowed with better understanding; discordant elements, alien nations were fused to harmony in this vivid picture.

Peter turned to Kitty, expecting to see her face aglow with the warmth of it.  She stood beside him, the one unresponsive soul in the room, on her lips a pale, tolerant smile.