"I say, Miss Robson, can't you do a one-step--really? There isn't
anything to it! Come on--try; I'll pull you through."

Claire's knowledge of dancing was instinctive, but not a matter of much
practice, yet his distress was so comic that she relented. She wondered
if he could feel her trembling as they swung into the dance. She
stumbled once or twice from timidity, but Edington guided unerringly.
Half-way round she suddenly struck the proper swing.

"There--that's it," cried Edington, enthusiastically. "Now you've got
it! Fine!"

His praise mounted to her brain like a heady wine, and suddenly, in the
twinkling of an eye, all the repressed youth within her awoke with a
sweet and terrible joy.... They danced madly, perfectly, the rhythm
entering into them like something at once fluid and flaming. Her ecstasy
awoke a vague response in her partner, who bent forward as he kept
repeating, monotonously:

"And you said you couldn't, Miss Robson! Fancy, you said you couldn't!"

The music stopped abruptly with a crash. Some of the dancers made their
way leisurely back among the tables, but the most of them wandered about
the polished' floor, clapping insistent hands for an encore. In this
brief interlude, groups arrived and departed. The musicians lifted their
instruments to chin and lip, struck an opening chord; couples began to
whirl and glide. Claire Robson, palpitant and eager, followed Edington's
lead, but almost at the first moment of their rhythmic flight they came
crashing into the overcoated bulk of a man cutting across the corner of