Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/207

Rh they had not the least idea whether this was the "extra" just, finishing, or another number under way. Panic-stricken they scurried back.

The night wore away. At midnight a slight lassitude overcame the dancers, but supper revived them; and the German was undertaken with zest. Ben Sansome here came into his own. This was the one thing he did superlatively well. Even Patrick Boyd acknowledged that there was something to the little fat pug-dog of a man after all, for Boyd knew executive ability when he saw it. Sansome not only taught and conducted many complicated figures, but he repressed too great exuberance and he kept order. Withal he did it with tact, so that nobody was offended. The card players came in to watch. The stray couples emerged from the cosy corners. Even the caterer's men—those who were not busy about some duties—gathered in the background; for a cotillion was not always to be seen. It was an overwhelming success.

The deep bell on the clock tower downtown had struck the half-hour after two before the German came to a triumphant conclusion. The last strains found Daphne and Kenneth together near the door. By tacit consent they stepped around the palms for a breath of air.

The brightness of the stars overhead had mysteriously dimmed. They shone wearily as though from an immense remoteness and as though invisible influences were passing between the earth and them. Elsewhere than overhead they were veiled. A slow, sweet steady air breathed from the east. The night was still, full of portent. Not a sound broke the dead, waiting silence: no cricket nor insect shrilled, no bird called, scarcely a leaf rustled in spite of the steady air from the east.

A drop of water splashed against Daphne's upturned face: another marked the brick at her feet. As though in immediate response to a signal a frog began loudly to chirp. For nine months now he had lain in patient silence, wearing down the slow time while his enemies, the dry months, passed; standing faithful sentry to announce the return of the wet months, his friends.

With an excitement that Kenneth would understand only after he had become a true Californian, Daphne ran into the ball-