Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/274

 colored sky. His shoe accidentally,—then, God help him deliberately,—touched a surface which his prosaic self recognized as fine leather, but which his more rarefied self recognized as the anchorage of the kite string.

They ate and drank and laughed and talked. Not a thing worth saying was said, and the brunt of it all was sustained by Mamie and Hellgren. Olga and Grover contributed punctuation. It didn't matter what was said, thought Grover, so long as those two could be urged and prodded to fill up the gap created by their existence on earth. What did matter was that an orchestra in another part of the building,—downstairs in a bigger room,—was playing. What also mattered, enormously, desperately, was that he and Olga recognized,—he dared guess it,—and instinctively responded to some hysterical overtone in the high spirits of the other; and each challenged the other's waywardness by pouring more wine. Is it just spring, he wondered? Is it a sign of transition from some weary old order into a vertiginous new one? Or in God's name, what?

"If we went down and danced a little!" Grover proposed.

"Oh, oui!" Olga agreed, as though she had been impatiently awaiting the suggestion.

There couldn't have been a better excuse than the music for the mood they were so eager to throw themselves into, each for his own reason, possibly, but none the less eagerly for that. The rhythms had the effect