One round of the ballroom floor was all the enjoyment they allowed themselves, for the lawyer significantly stepped out when they reached the entrance curtains. Britton looked at him vaguely and contracted his brows in a half-frown when he remembered.
He led the lady to a settee and bent over her for a moment.
"You will come back soon?" she whispered with a shade of wistfulness.
Britton pressed her fingers on her fan under pretence of examining it.
"Yes," he promised, glorying in the depths of her eyes, "I'll come back, not soon, but at once. Our dance isn't finished, you know."
He strode across the room, tall and elegant, and smiling over his shoulder so that the woman's heart leaped oddly as she watched him.
"Now, Ainsworth," he said, laying a hand on his comrade's arm, "what do you want with me? You'll please hurry, won't you?"
The lawyer drew Britton's arm tightly through his own and turned across the main promenade.
"That woman's married," he said with brutal directness, "and I'm taking you to her husband."
Britton whipped out his arm from Ainsworth's grasp and held it upraised, as if to deliver a blow, while a red wave of denunciation flamed over his fine features.
"You-" he began, and halted, for the grim, set look in his companion's eyes carried undeniable conviction.
"Strike me if you like," Ainsworth observed harshly, "but come this way with me."
Britton's fist fell to his side, and he drew his whole frame rigidly erect in a sort of convulsive movement. In spite of his great strength he staggered a little, and his face was ashy-white.
He turned irresolutely back towards the entrance of the dancing salon, but Ainsworth took his arm again.
"No, this way," he urged, and led him as he would a boy.
People marked his rigid muscles and pallid skin, and murmured compassionately at the apparent stroke of illness.
"Hello, old chap!" cried one of his numerous acquaintances, shouldering up, "what's wrong? Heat too much for you? By Jove, you're in a beastly funk, and I don't wonder, for it's deuced close in here."
The lawyer waved him aside, and they went on, while all the guests began to complain of heat, and the assiduous concierge ran to open wider the French casements on the lawns.