Yvette, my friend, Baron Saval."

"Good evening, Monsieur. Are you always as tall as that?"

Servigny replied in that bantering tone which he always used with
her, in order to conceal his mistrust and his uncertainty:

"No, Mam'zelle. He has put on his greatest dimensions to please your
mother, who loves a colossus."

And the young girl remarked with a comic seriousness: "Very well But
when you come to see me you must diminish a little if you please. I
prefer the medium height. Now Muscade has just the proportions which
I like."

And she gave her hand to the newcomer. Then she asked: "Do you
dance, Muscade? Come, let us waltz." Without replying, with a quick
movement, passionately, Servigny clasped her waist and they
disappeared with the fury of a whirlwind.

They danced more rapidly than any of the others, whirled and
whirled, and turned madly, so close together that they seemed but
one, and with the form erect, the legs almost motionless, as if some
invisible mechanism, concealed beneath their feet, caused them to
twirl. They appeared tireless. The other dancers stopped from time
to time. They still danced on, alone. They seemed not to know where
they were nor what they were doing, as if, they had gone far away
from the ball, in an ecstasy. The musicians continued to play, with
their looks fixed upon this mad couple; all the guests gazed at
them, and when finally they did stop dancing, everyone applauded
them.

She was a little flushed, with strange eyes, ardent and timid, less
daring than a moment before, troubled eyes, blue, yet with a pupil
so black that they seemed hardly natural. Servigny appeared giddy.
He leaned against a door to regain his composure.

"You have no head, my poor Muscade, I am steadier than you," said
Yvette to Servigny. He smiled nervously, and devoured her with a
look. His animal feelings revealed themselves in his eyes and in the
curl of his lips. She stood beside him looking down, and her bosom
rose and fell in short gasps as he looked at her.

Then she said softly: "Really, there are times when you are like a
tiger about to spring upon his prey. Come, give me your arm, and let
us find your friend."

Silently he offered her his arm and they went down the long drawing-room
together.

Saval was not alone, for the Marquise Obardi had rejoined him. She
conversed with him on ordinary and fashionable subjects with a
seductiveness in her tones which intoxicated him. And, looking at