d promised him. It argued a fineness of perception and a
generosity for which she would never have given him credit. She felt a
little warm rush of gratitude towards him.

"No, no!" she cried impulsively, "you shan't give up your dance." Then,
as he still hesitated: "I should _like_ to dance with you--really I
should, Antoine. You've been so--so _decent_."

Davilof's face lit up. He looked radiant--like a child that has been
patted on the back and told it is good.

"No wonder we are all in love with you!" he exclaimed in low, vehement
tones; adding quickly, as he detected a flicker of apprehension in
Magda's eyes: "But you need not fear to dance with me. I will be as your
brother--I will go on being 'decent.'"

And he was. He danced as perfectly as any of his music-loving
nationality can dance, but there was a restraint, a punctilious
deference about him that, even while it amazed, availed to reassure
Magda and restore her shaken confidence in the man.

She did not realise or suspect that just those two simple actions of
hers--the good turn she had done Gillian at some considerable cost to
herself in the matter of personal pride, and her quick recognition of
the musician's sense of fair play in renouncing his dance with her when
he knew the circumstances which had impelled her to promise it--these
two things had sufficed to turn Davilof's heady, emotional devotion into
something more enduring and perhaps more dangerous, an abiding, deeply
rooted love and passion for her which was stronger than the man himself.

He left the house immediately after the conclusion of his dance with
her, and Magda was speedily surrounded by a crowd of would-be partners.
But she felt disinclined to dance again, and, always chary of her
favours in this respect, she remained watching the dancing in preference
to taking any part in it, exchanging small-talk with the men who,
finding she could not be induced to reconsider her decision, clustered
round her chair like bees round a honey-pot.

It was towards the end of the evening that Michael Quarrington finally
joined the group. Magda's eyes rested on him with a mixture of annoyance
and approval--annoyance because she had expected him to ask her for a
dance quite early in the course of the programme and he had failed to do
so, and approval because he was of that clean-cut, fair-haired type
of man who invariably contrives to look particularly well-groomed and
thoroughbred in evening kit.