captain utterbourne, with faint petulance, his lips twitching to a smile of finely etched satire, scrupulously withdrew; but[31] he turned back a moment and faced king with the most affectionate and least complex expression of which he was capable.
“by the way, would you mind dropping in at my office tomorrow? you know where we are—hyde’s. there’s something i’d like to go into—h’m?” his mere look subtly completed the sentence; for captain utterbourne had perfected the art of intelligible suspension. mr. king agreed eagerly, though he kept his monocle spinning in a thoroughly sophisticated and idle fashion. utterbourne had been but glancingly arrested in his departure—all this was very high art. with a faint bow to stella, which delicately rebuked her for having been the means of interrupting him at a moment when he had cryptically begun to open his mind to his new favourite, the captain was gone; and they saw him pause, in passing, to banter his sister flora, just glancingly, as she sat in a little whirl of gentle gossip near the punch bowl.
“may i sit down here?” suggested mr. king gracefully; and found her looking up at him almost coyly, as though having tête-à-têtes with men of his calibre were indeed an established phase of her life. but naturally her heart was fluttering very much.
he talked easily and in a conventionally flirtatious manner: had been noticing her all evening, he said—though as a matter of fact, he was but recently arrived. and she, almost painfully excited, played back in quite the same spirit, though it privately cost a greater effort. mr. king was so bewilderingly nice that she used every instinctive gift in an effort to please and impress him: yes, just giddily let herself go.
they talked of pleasant immediacies. when she dropped her handkerchief, he stooped to pick it up; and when he handed it to her something—something vaguely reminiscent—made her feel as she had felt when the introduction was taking place. certainly no one had ever before treated her with such a wealth of worldly chivalry.
“oh, thank you!” she fluttered; and he returned a deft little[32] gesture. then another flash of reminiscence brought a gay cry to her lips. “oh, now i know! we’ve met before—though i’m sure you’ll never remember!” and as she spoke of the episode of the rescued fashion page, stella saw again a handsome stranger emerging from the travel bureau, his hand full of alluring pamphlets, and in his buttonhole a single violet. surely she hadn’t been mistaken?
just at first he didn’t seem to remember, but in an instant he chivalrously remembered it all with the utmost vividness. they discussed the curious little coincidence. it was quite wonderful. her romantic nature made the lavish most of a circumstance which to another might seem casual in the extreme. such things really happen pretty often, but her mood insisted upon the most rosy values; and indeed, the tiny episode, from the moment he did remember, seemed to carry them swiftly along toward an intimacy undreamed of a moment since.
he looked at her, she felt, almost consumingly with his magnetic round blue eyes.
presently he asked whether she wouldn’t like some punch, and she said she would, so they got up and he gave her his worldly arm. she had never before been so satisfyingly thrilled.
mr. king handed her a glass of punch, making a minute ceremony of it; and she fluttered again, and smiled across at him quite archly over the rim as she sipped.
he asked her: “i suppose you spend about all your time dancing, miss meade? it seems to be the rage nowadays.”
and while she ought, of course, to have laughed it off, or been at least flirtingly evasive, she looked at him instead with an impulse of wistfulness out of her meagre life, and a wave of unassuming candour brought out the admission: “i really don’t very much, but i enjoy it immensely. don’t you think this is a very nice party?”
he seemed to regard her with subtly keener interest; and, curiously enough, it was just that impulsive little flash of[33] candour in stella, to begin with, that stimulated in mr. king a sentiment destined at last to involve her most surprisingly. she had a very definite picture, however, of the sort of impression she wanted to make on this man—the impression he seemed irresistibly to invite—and it would have bewildered her to think he might be getting another picture altogether.
he asked her if she wouldn’t like to dance, and without even glancing at her card she said yes she would; and then half wished she had said no, because she was hazy about the new steps, and was desperately afraid mr. king would find her, after all, disappointing.
but they danced, and everything went splendidly, and he didn’t find her so disappointing, although himself so immaculately proficient in the new steps.
