His father and a number of his cronies were over in the dining-room of his grand home, glad to get away from the crowd.  He would have to stay, and, besides, he wanted to.  Had he better dance with Aileen?  His wife cared little for dancing, but he would have to dance with her at least once.  There was Mrs. Seneca Davis smiling at him, and Aileen.  By George, how wonderful!  What a girl!

“I suppose your dance-list is full to overflowing.  Let me see.”  He was standing before her and she was holding out the little blue-bordered, gold-monogrammed booklet.  An orchestra was playing in the music room.  The dance would begin shortly.  There were delicately constructed, gold-tinted chairs about the walls and behind palms.

He looked down into her eyes—­those excited, life-loving, eager eyes.

“You’re quite full up.  Let me see.  Nine, ten, eleven.  Well, that will be enough.  I don’t suppose I shall want to dance very much.  It’s nice to be popular.”

“I’m not sure about number three.  I think that’s a mistake.  You might have that if you wish.”

She was falsifying.

“It doesn’t matter so much about him, does it?”

His cheeks flushed a little as he said this.

“No.”

Her own flamed.

“Well, I’ll see where you are when it’s called.  You’re darling.  I’m afraid of you.”  He shot a level, interpretive glance into her eyes, then left.  Aileen’s bosom heaved.  It was hard to breathe sometimes in this warm air.

While he was dancing first with Mrs. Cowperwood and later with Mrs. Seneca Davis, and still later with Mrs. Martyn Walker, Cowperwood had occasion to look at Aileen often, and each time that he did so there swept over him a sense of great vigor there, of beautiful if raw, dynamic energy that to him was irresistible and especially so to-night.  She was so young.  She was beautiful, this girl, and in spite of his wife’s repeated derogatory comments he felt that she was nearer to his clear, aggressive, unblinking attitude than any one whom he had yet seen in the form of woman.  She was unsophisticated, in a way, that was plain, and yet in another way it would take so little to make her understand so much.  Largeness was the sense he had of her—­not physically, though she was nearly as tall as himself—­but emotionally.  She seemed so intensely alive.  She passed close to him a number of times, her eyes wide and smiling, her lips parted, her teeth agleam, and he felt a stirring of sympathy and companionship for her which he had not previously experienced.  She was lovely, all of her—­delightful.

“I’m wondering if that dance is open now,” he said to her as he drew near toward the beginning of the third set.  She was seated with her latest admirer in a far corner of the general living-room, a clear floor now waxed to perfection.  A few palms here and there made embrasured parapets of green.  “I hope you’ll excuse me,” he added, deferentially, to her companion.