"I’ve a kennel of sorts in Bleecker Street. But you might be interested in one or two things I’m working on. You see," he added with careless good humour, "I’m obliged to work, now." Cleland said in a low voice: "I’m sorry things went wrong with you." "Oh, they didn’t. It was quite all right, Cleland. I really don’t mind. Will you really drop in some day soon?" "Yes." Dancing began again. Grismer stepped back with the easy, graceful courtesy that became him, conceding Stephanie to Cleland as a matter of course; and the latter, who had been ready to claim her, found himself disarmed in advance. "Is it Grismer’s dance, Steve?" he asked. "I promised him. But, Jim, I’m afraid to let you go——" They all laughed, and she added: "When a girl gets a man back after three long years, is it astonishing that she keeps tight hold of him?" "You’d better dance with her, Cleland," said Grismer, smiling. But Cleland could not accept a gift from this man, and he surrendered her with sufficient grace. "Jim!" she said frankly. "You’re not going after that dryad, are you? She’s exceedingly common and quite shamelessly under-dressed. Shall I introduce you to a nice girl—or do you know a sufficient number?" "You know," he said, laughing, "that I ought to play my part of Fourth Caliph and go and capture a pretty widow——" "What!" "Certainly," he said tranquilly; "didn’t Ali take prisoner Ayesha, the youthful widow of Mohammed? I’ll look about while you’re dancing——" "I don’t wish you to!" she exclaimed, half vexed, half laughing. "Oswald, does he mean it?" "He looks as though he does," replied Grismer, amused. "There’s a Goddess of Night over there, Cleland—very pretty and very unconcealed under a cloud of spangled stars——" "Oswald! I don’t wish him to! Jim! Listen to me, please——!" for he had already started toward the little brunette Goddess of Night. "We have box seven! Please remember. I shall wait for you!" "Right!" he nodded, now intently bent on displeasing her; a little excited, too, by her solicitude, yet sullenly understanding that it sprang from no deeper emotion than her youthful heart had yet betrayed for him. No woman ever let a man go willingly, whether kin or lover—whether she had use for him or not. Stephanie, managing to keep him in view among the dancers, saw the little Goddess of Night, with her impudent up-tilted nose, floating amid her scandalously diaphanous draperies in his arms through a dreamy tango, farther and farther away from her. Things went wrong with her, too; she dropped her emerald girdle and several of the paste stones rolled away; the silk of her body-vest ripped, revealing the snowy skin, and she had to knot her gold sari higher. Then the jewelled thong of her left sandal snapped and she lost it for a moment. "The devil!" she said, slipping her bare foot into it and half skating toward the nearest lower-tier box.