rs.

"My word!" said Mr. Direck. "To think I'd be dancing."

But he said no more because he needed his breath.

He liked it, and he had another attempt with one of the visitor
daughters, who danced rather more formally, and then Teddy took the
pianola and Mr. Direck was astonished by the spectacle of an eminent
British thinker in a whirl of black velvet and extremely active black
legs engaged in a kind of Apache dance in pursuit of the visitor wife.
In which Mr. Lawrence Carmine suddenly mingled.

"In Germany," said Herr Heinrich, "we do not dance like this. It could
not be considered seemly. But it is very pleasant."

And then there was a waltz, and Herr Heinrich bowed to and took the
visitor wife round three times, and returned her very punctually and
exactly to the point whence he had taken her, and the Indian young
gentleman (who must not be called "coloured") waltzed very well with
Cecily. Mr. Direck tried to take a tolerant European view of this brown
and white combination. But he secured her as soon as possible from this
Asiatic entanglement, and danced with her again, and then he danced with
her again.

"Come and look at the moonlight," cried Mrs. Britling.

And presently Mr. Direck found himself strolling through the rose garden
with Cecily. She had the sweetest moonlight face, her white shining robe
made her a thing of moonlight altogether. If Mr. Direck had not been in
love with her before he was now altogether in love. Mamie Nelson, whose
freakish unkindness had been rankling like a poisoned thorn in his heart
all the way from Massachusetts, suddenly became Ancient History.

A tremendous desire for eloquence arose in Mr. Direck's soul, a desire
so tremendous that no conceivable phrase he could imagine satisfied it.
So he remained tongue-tied. And Cecily was tongue-tied, too. The scent
of the roses just tinted the clear sweetness of the air they breathed.

Mr. Direck's mood was an immense solemnity, like a dark ocean beneath
the vast dome of the sky, and something quivered in every fibre of his
being, like moonlit ripples on the sea. He felt at the same time a
portentous stillness and an immense enterprise....

Then suddenly the pianola, pounding a cake walk, burst out into ribald
invitation....

"Come back to dance!" cried Cecily, like one from whom a spell has just
been broken. And Mr. Direck, snatching at a vanishing scrap of
everything he had not said, remarked, "I shall never forget this
eve