He removed his eyes from hers, and, glancing for a moment at the remaining guests, who sat like a jury with Mr. Le Roy at the end as foreman, he drained his glass and leaped into the conversational ring with a vivacious effrontery that was startling. Naturally of high spirits and easily stimulated by applause, he juggled phrase and quotation, tossed words into the air, and, as though he were a conjurer, watched them link together into ideas. He held his listeners in wonder and challenged them all on subjects ranging from New Thought to the latest scandal. Once the American held him with a witty retort, but Montague feinted with an epigram and stabbed him with a paradox. On one occasion the newly created subaltern, stirred by wine and a certain courage derived from his khaki, threw a truism into the arena in the hope that it would trip the talker, but Montague, catching it on the point of his wit, twirled it about, and hurled it at its source, laughing as the discomfited young officer retired behind the barriers of self-conscious silence. His hearers applauded by look and word, and Mrs. Le Roy whispered to her servant to keep Montague's glass full.... She was delighted.... She had never seen him glitter so. And Montague noted the applause, emptying his glass again and again; but it was neither wine nor the incense of flattery that had stirred his pulse to such energy.... In that glance from Vera's eyes he had read a truth. His power, whatever it was, had mastered her dislike, and he knew that in the evening before him she would bend in his arms as the bow yields to the strength of the archer. IV After dinner they danced. Mrs. Le Roy was not a gifted hostess, but she acted on the principle that food, wine and music--provided the food and the wine were high-class, and the music was not--would make any evening a success. Few of her guests disagreed with her; their feet and their tongues were light, and they danced and talked without self-consciousness or mental effort. Twice Montague had danced with the girl, but it amused him to leave her each time with some mocking pleasantry, the only answer to the smoldering question of her eyes. It was nearly midnight when he led her, almost without asking, into the deserted recess of the Le Roy's conservatory, and, beckoning her to a settee, sat down beside her. With her hands clasped on her lap she gazed fixedly at the shadowy garden showing outside. Montague looked at her, and his eyes grew bright as they noted her poise, tempered by fear of him. He leaned over and rested his hand on hers. "Please don't," she said quietly, making no effort to withdraw her own. "Women always say 'don't,'" he said. "I suppose they enjoy a sort of preliminary _tête-à-tête_ with conscience before committing an indiscretion." "But I mean it, Dennis." "All women mean it, my dear Vera."