This little supper-table talk was the only cloud on a radiant night. The Vicomte de Mauregard took her to dance. At first she felt awkward, knowing only the simple steps of five years ago. But instinct soon guided her, and for two hours she danced and danced in an unthinking ecstasy. The clattering and unmeaning din which had dazed her on her entrance to the Savoy was now pregnant with physical significance. The tearing of the strings, the clashing of the cymbals, the barbaric thumping of the drum, the sudden raucous scream from negro throats, set vibrating within her responsive chords of an atavistic savagery. When each nerve-tearing cacophony came to its abrupt end, she joined breathlessly with the suddenly halting crow in eager clapping for the encore. And then, when the blood-stirring strings and cymbals crashed out, overpowering the staccato of hand beating hand, she surrendered herself with an indrawn sigh of content to her partner’s arm—to the rhythm, to the movement, to the mere bodily guidance, half conscious of the proud flexibility of her frame under the man’s firm clasp, to something, she knew not what, far remote from previous experience. Strange, too, the personality of the man did not matter. Paul Barraclough, Sydney Rooke, Mauregard, she danced with them all in turn. In her pulsating happiness she mixed them all up together, so that a flashing glance, liable to be misinterpreted, proceeded from a mere impulse of identification. Now and then, in the swimming throng of men and women, and the intoxication of passing raiment impregnated with scent and cigarette smoke, she exchanged an absent smile with Lydia and Lady Barraclough. Otherwise she scarcely realized their existence. She was led panting by Mauregard to a supper table while he went in search of refreshment. He returned with a waiter, apologizing for the abomination of iced ginger ale and curled orange peel, which was all that the laws of the land allowed him to offer. Horse’s neck, it was called. She laughed, delighted with the name, and, after drinking, laughed again, delighted with the cool liquid so tingling on her palate. “It’s a drink for the gods,” she declared. “If you offered it, the unfortunate Bacchus would drink it without a murmur.” “Do you really think it’s so awful?” “_Mon Dieu!_” replied the young Frenchman. Then Lydia came up with a dark-eyed, good-looking boy in tow, whom she introduced, as Mr. Bobbie Quinton and Olivia was surprised to recognize as one of the professionals. She accepted, however, his invitation to dance and went off on his arm. She found him a boy of charming manners and agreeable voice, and in the lightness and certainty of his dancing he far outclassed her other partners. He suggested new steps. She tried and blundered. She excused herself. “This is the first time I’ve danced for four years.”