es."

A flash of exultancy leaped into his eyes.

"So? I might have known you would adore dancing. You shall have your
fill. You shall have many dances, but only one partner. I shall suffice.
I am one of the best dancers in the world."

"And evidently one of the vainest men," coolly.

"What of it? Vanity is good when it is not misplaced. But I was not
boasting. I _am_ one of the best dancers in the world. Why should I not
be? My mother was Lucia Vannini. She danced before princes." He might
have added, "She was a prince's mistress." It had been the truth.

"Oh!" cried Tony. She had heard of Lucia Vannini--a famous Italian beauty
and dancer of three decades ago. So Alan Massey was her son. No wonder he
was foreign, different, in ways and looks. One could forgive his
extravagances when one knew.

"Ah, you like that, my beauty? You will like it even better when you
have danced with me. It is then that you will know what it is to dance.
We shall dance and dance and--love. I shall make you mine dancing,
_Toinetta mia_."

Tony shrank back from his ardent eyes and his veiled threat. She was a
passionate devotee of her own freedom. She did not want to be made his or
any man's--certainly not his. She decided not to dance with him at all.
But later, when the violins began to play and Alan Massey came and stood
before her, uttering no word but commanding her to him with his eyes and
his out-stretched, nervous, slender, strong, artist hands, she
yielded--could scarcely have refused if she had wanted to. But she did
not want to, though she told herself it was with Lucia Vannini's son
rather than with Alan Massey that she desired to dance.

After that she thought not at all, gave herself up to the very ecstasy of
emotion. She had danced all her life, but, even as he had predicted, she
learned for the first time in this man's arms what dancing really was. It
was like nothing she had ever even dreamed of--pure poetry of motion, a
curious, rather alarming weaving into one of two vividly alive persons in
a kind of pagan harmony, a rhythmic rapture so intense it almost hurt. It
seemed as if she could have gone on thus forever.

But suddenly she perceived that she and her partner had the floor alone,
the others had stopped to watch, though the musicians still played on
frenziedly, faster and faster. Flushed, embarrassed at finding herself
thus conspicuous, she drew herself away from Alan Massey.

"We must stop," she murmured. "T