She answered Thair, but all the while was watching Longacre coming across the floor, with a word here and there, and bright, absent eyes. His look found concentration as he paused in front of her. His eyes were more eager than she had seen them for longer than she cared to remember. He was less at ease, too. His looks at Thair were hints. When the returning violins urged that gentleman in the direction of his hostess and his hostess’s daughter, Longacre, as if at last released, burst out: “Now let’s get out of this before any more come along!” “Any more?” She was composed about it. “That two hundred pounds of commercialism looking in this direction.” He indicated Holden with a sliding eye. “Why, Tony, what has happened to you?” “Don’t you know?” He was smiling, but well in earnest. “I haven’t said a word to you,” he pronounced impressively, “for twenty-four hours.” “But why?” She seemed to challenge him with: “Whose fault is that?” “Because you dodged,” he replied coolly. “And unless I look out, you’ll do it again.” “And your suggestion is that we dodge together?” He rose, and stood in front of her while Holden passed slowly in the crowd, turning his penetrating eye from side to side, but missing them completely. “Florence,” he said, “thaw me out. I’m frozen stiff. Come, I’m stale with self-communications.” He thrust his arm through hers as he drew her around the skirts of the crowd. She felt its urge with a heightened pulse. “Isn’t this rather conspicuously inconspicuous?” she wanted to know as he seated her behind a palm in the crook of a side stair. “Quite within the limits,” he assured her. “Or do you _want_ to be interrupted?” “Tony, you’re almost formal!” “You make me feel so. You’re a stranger.” Upon this, the curve of her smile was almost childlike. “Why,” he laughed, surprised, “you’re younger than I!” The glittering butterfly in her hair trembled with her laughter. “Delicious!” she cried. “I suppose that’s the youngest thing that’s been said to-night,” he admitted, rueful as a boy, but wholly amused. He looked up at her, and again he seemed to see her anew, alight with an intensity that flashed in her large eyes, that seemed reflected in the glitter of her slow-waving black fan. “You are the oldest, youngest ever born,” she said, with a gentle caress of voice that caused his smile to fade and held his eyes steady. “What a way you have with words!” he said. “You make them really mean things. You get hold of one—” “With words,” she helped him. “Oh, no, no; not only that! But the _way_ you do it,” he said, with his oldest look on his young face. “You get nearer with them. Most only get away.” He alarmed her and reassured her in a breath. “Words?” she thought, remembering Julia’s eyes. Yes, words were her weapons, and that which was back of them: the power of mentality. But how much did that count for now? “You don’t like people, Tony,” she told him.