Then, as an imperial mandate is given, H. R. said to Miss Goodchild:
He offered her his arm. The young men rose and made room for him. Duty called, and they never interfered with duty.
Grace hypnotically obeyed, for H. R. was frowning. Together they walked down to the floor of the Garden.
The Public Sentiment Corps did their duty. They had not yet received the beer. They shouted, frenziedly:
The public took up the cheering. Thousands of outstretched hands reached out for his. But H. R. merely bowed, right and left, and walked to the middle of the floor.
"Smile at them!" he whispered, fiercely, to Grace.
She did. She knew then what it was to be a Queen. She felt an overpowering kindliness toward all these delightful, simple people. Reggie was not brilliant, but that wasn't expected of a Van Duzen. She did not love Reggie, but she _liked_ him. As Mrs. Van Duzen she would always have what she liked. She would never marry H. R.! It was preposterous.
The band began to play. The crowd, instead of dancing, moved toward the sides--to give H. R. room to dance.
Never before on Manhattan Island had such a triumph of personality fallen to the lot of any man.
H. R. put his arm about Grace Goodchild. She shrank from the symbolism of bondage.
"The world is looking on!" he admonished her.
Knowing that she danced very well, she now had but one fear--that her partner might make her ridiculous.
But H. R. was the best dancer she had ever honored.
She felt her resolution not to marry him slipping away. He led divinely. She felt that she herself had never danced so well in her life. He brought out the best that was in her.
"Ever try the Rutgers Roll?" he whispered, tensely.
When a woman lets herself go, all is over except the terms of the capitulation. She let herself go desperately, because she was forced to do it; fearfully, because of the appalling possibility of a fiasco.
She did not know how it was done. She had looped the loop and was still dancing away--a new but unutterably graceful undulation of torso and rhythmical leg work and exquisite sinuous motions of the arms and hands.
A storm of applause came to her ears, a hurricane steeped in saccharine. A man who could dance like that was fit to be any girl's husband!