After dinner they danced. Mrs. Le Roy was not a gifted hostess, but she
acted on the principle that food, wine and music--provided the food and
the wine were high-class, and the music was not--would make any evening
a success. Few of her guests disagreed with her; their feet and their
tongues were light, and they danced and talked without self-consciousness
or mental effort.
Twice Montague had danced with the girl, but it amused him to leave
her each time with some mocking pleasantry, the only answer to the
smoldering question of her eyes. It was nearly midnight when he led
her, almost without asking, into the deserted recess of the Le Roy's
conservatory, and, beckoning her to a settee, sat down beside her. With
her hands clasped on her lap she gazed fixedly at the shadowy garden
showing outside.
Montague looked at her, and his eyes grew bright as they noted her
poise, tempered by fear of him. He leaned over and rested his hand on
hers.
"Please don't," she said quietly, making no effort to withdraw her own.
"Women always say 'don't,'" he said. "I suppose they enjoy a sort of
preliminary _tête-à-tête_ with conscience before committing an
indiscretion."
"But I mean it, Dennis."
"All women mean it, my dear Vera."
Her color deepened, and she tried to release her hands from his, but
his grip tightened until it hurt. She made no further attempt, and he
moved still closer to her.
"Please let me go," she said, keeping her eyes steadily from him.
"You are inartistic."
"But I ask you--and you are a gentleman." Something of the dislike that
he had always known she felt for him crept into her voice and left a
nice tinge of irony.
"I have a valet and three addresses," he said, "and only pay my tailor
once a year.... In most countries that gives one the standing of a
gentleman."
She bit her lip and glanced quickly at him. His pulses, already stirred
by wine and the intrigue of a midnight amour, leaped into a fever at
the glimpse of burning eyes and lips that slightly trembled. He placed
his hand on her shoulder and drew her face towards his.
"Why," she said hesitatingly--"why do you want to kiss me?"
Montague smiled. "The eternal question, Vera. It has trapped more men
into proposals than all the wiles of a generation of fond mothers."
"But you don't love me," she said, her hands pressed against the lapels
of his jacket in self-defense.
"On such a night as this," he said, "who could help but love you?"
"Dennis, please let me go--I mean it--I shall call for help."
His brow contracted with a sudden frown. "You come here," he said, "at
midnight--into a deserted conservatory ... with me. Then, because I do
what you knew from the start I would do, you suddenly decide to play
'Little Miss Prude from the Convent.'"
"I--I should not have come. I did not want to, Dennis."