Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/217

Rh "Oh, well, let's try it, anyhow—out here, if you prefer." He motioned to a dark end of the veranda.

"Well, I will try," Reba miserably acquiesced at last.

She did try, though after the first half-minute there was no more "try," no more endeavor about it than about a ribbon of smoke that drifts whither the slightest breeze desires.

Miss Boutwell had told her that she was as light as a feather, had complimented her dancing; but then, Miss Boutwell was a teacher, took her money. She had found pleasure in dancing with Miss Boutwell. But this!

There was a terrace with a smooth marble floor that was laid flush with the close-cropped lawn, running along the length of the music-room in which the others were dancing, and after the first revealing five minutes on the veranda, Chadwick Booth said quietly to his partner, "Let us go down there," and led the way down an easy step or two, off the veranda onto the dimly glowing surface of the balustraded terrace. Upon the terrace, through the open windows the music filtered softly; above it the faint stars gleamed; and about it crowded fragrant shrubs, which now and again, through succeeding one-step, waltz, and fox-trot, brushed Reba caressingly as she passed by them.

Thus Dr. Booth and Reba danced for some twenty minutes or half an hour, alone out there in the dark—Reba too awed and frightened to speak, and Chadwick Booth too appreciative of the mysterious silence of his fairy-footed partner to jar the situation with anything so crude as speech. Even through the short intervals