Weary pulled himself together and tried to look away, but a pair of
long blue eyes with heavy white lids drew him hypnotically across the
room. He did not want to go; he did not mean to go, but the first he
knew he was standing before her and she was smiling up at him just as
she used to do. And an evil spell seemed to fall upon Weary, so that
he thought one set of thoughts while his lips uttered sentences quite
apart from his wishes. He was telling her, for instance, that he was
glad to see her; and he was not glad. He was wishing the train which
brought her to Montana had jumped the track and gone over a high
cut-bank, somewhere.

She continued to smile up at him, and she called him Will and held out
her hand. When, squirming inward protest, he took it, she laid her
left hand upon his and somehow made him feel as if he were in a trap.
Her left hand was soft and plump and cool, and it was covered with
rings that gave flashes and sparkles of light when she moved, and her
nails were manicured to a degree not often seen in Dry Lake. She drew
her fingers caressingly over his hand and spoke to him in _italics_, in
the way that had made many a man lose his head and say things extremely
foolish. Her name was Myrtle Forsyth, as Weary had cause to remember.

"How strange to see you away out here," she murmured, and glanced to
where the musicians were beginning to play little preparatory strains.
"Have you forgotten how to _waltz_, Will? You used to dance so _well_!"

What could a man do after a hint as broad as that one? Weary held out
his arm meekly, while mentally he was gnashing his teeth, and muttered
something about her giving him a trial. And she slipped her hand under
his elbow with a proprietary air that was not lost upon a certain
brown-eyed young woman across the hall.