“I didn’t know it was as bad as that,” Dr. Harris remarked.

They talked almost in whispers for several moments while I strained my ears to catch a syllable, but without success.  What were they talking about?  Was it about Dopey Jack?  Or did they know something about Betty Blackwell?  Perhaps it was about the Black Book.  Even when the music stopped they talked without dropping a word.

The music started again.  There was no mistaking the appeal that the rocking whirl of the rhythmic dance made.  From the side of the table where Kennedy was seated he could catch an occasional glimpse of the face of Marie.  I noticed that he had torn a blank page off the back of the menu and with a stub of a pencil was half idly writing.

At the top he had placed the word, “Nose,” followed by “straight, with nostrils a trifle flaring,” and some other words I could not quite catch.  Beneath that he had written “Ears,” which in turn was followed by some words which he was setting down carefully.  Eyes, chin, and mouth followed, until I began to realize that he was making a sort of scientific analysis of the woman’s features.

“I shall need some more—­” I caught as the music softened unexpectedly.

A singer on the little platform was varying the programme now by a solo and I shifted my chair so as to get a better view and at the same time also a look at the table around the corner from us.

As I did so I saw Dr. Harris reach into his breast pocket and take out a little package which he quickly handed to Marie.  As their hands met, their eyes met also.  I fancied that the doctor struggled to demagnetize, so to speak, the look which she gave him.

“You’ll come to see me—­afterwards?” she asked, dropping the little package into her handbag of gold mesh and rattling the various accoutrements of beautification which tinkled next to it.

Harris nodded.

“You’re a life saver to some—­” floated over to me from Marie.

The solo had been completed and the applause was dying away.

" ... tells me he needs ... badly off ... don’t forget to see ...”

The words came in intervals.  What they meant I did not know, but I strove to remember them.  Evidently Marie and a host of others were depending on Harris for something.  At any rate, it seemed, now that she had talked she felt easier in mind, as one does after carrying a weight a long time in secret.

“Tanguez-vous?” he asked as the orchestra struck up again.

“Yes—­thank you, Harry—­just one.”

We watched the couple attentively as they were alternately lost and found in the dizzy swaying mass.  The music became wilder and they threw themselves into the abandon of the dance.

They had been absorbed so much in each other and the unburdening of whatever it was she had wanted to tell him, that neither had noticed the other couple on the other side of the floor whose presence had divided our own attention.