"

"Let me get far enough," George said, "and you won't be able to make
trouble--you, or your sister, or your father."

Lambert grinned, the doubt leaving his face as if he had reached a
decision.

"I wouldn't bank on father. I'd keep out of his sight."

The advice placed him, for the present, on the safe side. Sylvia's
decision remained, and just then the music crashed into a silence,
broken by exigent applause. George got up, thrusting his hands in his
pockets. The orchestra surrendered to the applause, but was Sylvia
dancing now?

Voices drifted in from the hall, one high and obdurate; others better
controlled, but persistent in argument. Lambert grimaced. George
sneered.

"But that's all right, because he didn't have to work for his living."

"If you don't come a cropper," Lambert said, "you'll get fed up with
that sort of thinking. Dolly's young."

Dalrymple was the first in the room, flushed, a trifle uneven in his
movements. Goodhue and Wandel followed. Goodhue smiled in a pained,
surprised way. Wandel's precise features expressed nothing.

"Why not dancing, Lambert, old Eli?" Dalrymple called jovially. "Haul
these gospel sharks off----Waiter! I say, waiter! Something bubbly, dry,
and nineteen hundred, if they're doing us that well."

The others didn't protest. They seemed to arrange themselves as a
friendly screen between Dalrymple and the elderly men. George didn't
care to talk to Dalrymple in that condition--there was too much that
Dalrymple had always wanted to say and hadn't. He started for the door,
but Wandel caught his arm.

"Wait around, very strong person," he whispered. "Dolly doesn't know it,
but he's leaving in a minute."

George shook his head, and started on. Dalrymple glanced up.

"Morton!" he said.

Goodhue took the glass from the waiter, but Dalrymple, grinning a shamed
sort of triumph and comprehension, reached out for it and sipped.

"Not bad. Great dancer, Morton. Around the end, and through the centre,
and all that----"

"Keep quiet," Goodhue warned him.

George knew that the other wouldn't. He shrank from the breaking of the
sullen truce between them. Dalrymple glanced at his cuffs, spilling a
little of the wine.

"Damned sight more useful to stick to your laundry--it's none too good."

Quite distinctly George caught Lambert's startled change of countenance
and his quick movement forward, Goodhue's angry flush, Wandel's apparent
unconcern. In that moment he measured