Up and down the hall she sped in some man's arms, round and round, up and down, until another man, agile, dexterous, shot between the couples and claimed her. And then up and down again until some other man. . . . And sometimes they went back to rest in the intimately arranged chairs beneath the balcony, and sometimes stepped out of doors to saunter along a wide terrace.
It was incredibly independent. It was intoxicatingly free. It was also terrifyingly responsible.
And Maria Angelina, in her young fear of unpopularity, smiled so ingenuously upon each arrival, with a shy, backward deprecatory glance at her lost partner, that she stirred something new and wondering in each seasoned breast, and each dancer came again and again.
But all of them, the new young men from town, the tennis champion from Yale, the polo player from England, the lawyer from Washington, the stout widower, the professional bachelor, all were only moving shapes that came and went and came again and by their tribute made her successful in Johnny's eyes.
Indeed, so well did they do their work that Johnny was moved to brusque expostulation.
"Look here, Ri-Ri, I told you this was to be _my_ dance! With all those outsiders cutting in--Freeze them, Ri-Ri. Try a long, hard level look on the next one you see making your way. . . . Don't you _want_ to dance with me, any more? Huh? Where's that stand-in of mine? Is it a little, old last year's model?"
"Fight 'em off. Bite 'em. Kick their shins. . . . Oh, Lord," groaned Johnny, dexterously whirling her about, "there's another coming. . . . Here's where we go. This way out."
Speedily he piloted her through the throng. Masterfully he caught her arm and drew her out of doors.
She was glad to be out of the dance. His clasp had been growing too personal . . . too tight. . . . Perhaps she was only oddly self-conscious . . . incapable of the serene detachment of those other dancers, who, yielding and intertwined, revolved in intimate harmony.
There was a moon. It shone soft and bright upon them, making a world of enchantment. The long lines of the mountains melted together like a violet cloud and above them a round top floated, pale and dreamy, as the dome of Saint Peter's at twilight.
