Rosalie continued to smoke and to inspect him critically: "You're a bit seedy and a bit weedy, Clive, but you'll come around with feeding. You're really all right. I'd have you myself if I was marrying young men these days." "That's nice of you, Rosalie.... But I'm full of rare bacilli." "The rarer the better--if you must have them. Give me the unusual, whether it's a disease or a gown. I believe I will take you, Clive--if you are not expected to live long." "That's the trouble. Nothing seems to be able to get me." Dane said as he passed with Peggy: "He's immune, Miss Faithorn. The prettiest woman I ever saw, he side-stepped in Lima. And even then every man wanted to shoot him up because she made eyes at him." "I think I'll go there," said Cecil. "Her name and quality if you please, Dane." "Ask Clive," he called back. Athalie, still smiling, said: "Shall I ask you, Clive?" "Don't ask that South American adventurer anything," interrupted Cecil, "but come and dance this Miraflores with me, Athalie--" "No, I don't wish to--" "Come on! You must!" "Oh, Cecil--please--" But he had his way; and, as usual, everybody watched her while the charming music lasted,--Clive among the others, standing a little apart, lean, erect, his dark gaze fixed. She came back to him after the dance, delicately flushed and a trifle breathless. "Do you dance that in England?" she asked. "It's danced--not at Court functions, I believe." "You never did care to dance, did you?" "No--" he shrugged, "I used to mess about some." "And what do you do to amuse yourself in these days?" "Nothing--much." "You must do _something_, Clive!" "Oh, yes ... I travel,--go about." "Is that all?" "That's about all." She had stepped aside to let the dancers pass; he moved with her. She said in a low, even voice: "Is it pleasant to be back, Clive?" He nodded in silence. "Nothing has changed very much since you went away. There's a new administration at the City Hall, a number of new sky-scrapers in town; people danced the Tango day before yesterday, the Maxixe yesterday, the Miraflores to-day, the Orchid to-morrow. That's about all, Clive." And as he merely acquiesced in silence, she glanced up sideways at him, and remained watching this new, sun-browned, lean-visaged version of the boy she had first known and the boyish man who had gone out of her life four years before. "Would you like to see Hafiz?" she asked. He turned quickly toward her: "Yes," he said, the ghost of a smile lining the corners of his eyes. "He's on my bed, asleep. Will you come?" Slipping along the edges of the dancing floor and stepping daintily over the rolled rugs, she led the way through the passage to her rose and ivory bedroom, Clive following.