He was standing before her and she was holding out the little blue-bordered, gold-monogrammed booklet. An orchestra was playing in the music room. The dance would begin shortly. There were delicately constructed, gold-tinted chairs about the walls and behind palms.
He looked down into her eyes--those excited, life-loving, eager eyes.
"You're quite full up. Let me see. Nine, ten, eleven. Well, that will be enough. I don't suppose I shall want to dance very much. It's nice to be popular."
"I'm not sure about number three. I think that's a mistake. You might have that if you wish."
She was falsifying.
"It doesn't matter so much about him, does it?"
His cheeks flushed a little as he said this.
"No."
Her own flamed.
"Well, I'll see where you are when it's called. You're darling.
I'm afraid of you." He shot a level, interpretive glance into her eyes, then left. Aileen's bosom heaved. It was hard to breathe sometimes in this warm air.
While he was dancing first with Mrs. Cowperwood and later with Mrs. Seneca Davis, and still later with Mrs. Martyn Walker, Cowperwood had occasion to look at Aileen often, and each time that he did so there swept over him a sense of great vigor there, of beautiful if raw, dynamic energy that to him was irresistible and especially so to-night. She was so young. She was beautiful, this girl, and in spite of his wife's repeated derogatory comments he felt that she was nearer to his clear, aggressive, unblinking attitude than any one whom he had yet seen in the form of woman.
She was unsophisticated, in a way, that was plain, and yet in another way it would take so little to make her understand so much.
Largeness was the sense he had of her--not physically, though she was nearly as tall as himself--but emotionally. She seemed so intensely alive. She passed close to him a number of times, her eyes wide and smiling, her lips parted, her teeth agleam, and he felt a stirring of sympathy and companionship for her which he had not previously experienced. She was lovely, all of her--delightful.
"I'm wondering if that dance is open now," he said to her as he drew near toward the beginning of the third set. She was seated with her latest admirer in a far corner of the general living-room, a clear floor now waxed to perfection. A few palms here and there made embrasured parapets of green. "I hope you'll excuse me," he added, deferentially, to her companion.
"Surely," the latter replied, rising.
"Yes, indeed," she replied. "And you'd better stay here with me.
It's going to begin soon. You won't mind?" she added, giving her companion a radiant smile.
"Not at all. I've had a lovely waltz." He strolled off.
Cowperwood sat down. "That's young Ledoux, isn't it? I thought so. I saw you dancing. You like it, don't you?"
"I'm crazy about it."
"Well, I can't say that myself. It's fascinating, though. Your partner makes such a difference. Mrs. Cowperwood doesn't like it as much as I do."
His mention of Lillian made Aileen think of her in a faintly derogative way for a moment.
"I think you dance very well. I watched you, too." She questioned afterwards whether she should have said this. It sounded most forward now--almost brazen.
"Oh, did you?"
"Yes."
He was a little keyed up because of her--slightly cloudy in his thoughts--because she was generating a problem in his life, or would if he let her, and so his talk was a little tame. He was thinking of something to say--some words which would bring them a little nearer together. But for the moment he could not. Truth to tell, he wanted to say a great deal.
"Well, that was nice of you," he added, after a moment. "What made you do it?"
He turned with a mock air of inquiry. The music was beginning again. The dancers were rising. He arose.
He had not intended to give this particular remark a serious turn; but, now that she was so near him, he looked into her eyes steadily but with a soft appeal and said, "Yes, why?"