"Come on, Athalie," he said, "tell Peg to turn on one of those
Peruvian dances."

Peggy Brooks at the piano struck a soft sensuous chord or two, but
Francis Hargrave would not have it, and he pulled out the proper
phonographic record and cranked the machine while Cecil rolled up the
Beluch rugs.

The somewhat muffled air that exuded from the machine was the lovely
Miraflores, gay, lively, languorous, sad by turns--and much danced at
the moment in New York.

A new spring moon looked into the room from the west where like
elegant and graceful phantoms the dancers moved, swayed, glided, swung
back again with sinuous grace into the suavely delicate courtship of
the dance.

The slender feet and swaying figure of Athalie seemed presently to
bewitch the other couple, for they drew aside and stood together
watching that exquisite incarnation of youth itself, gliding, bending,
floating in the lilac-scented, lilac-tinted dusk under the young moon.

The machine ran down in the course of time, and Hargrave went over to
re-wind it, but Peggy Brooks waved him aside and seated herself at the
piano, saying she had enough of Hargrave.

She was still playing the quaint, sweet dance called "The Orchid," and
Hargrave was leaning on the piano beside her watching Cecil and Athalie
drifting through the dusk to the music's rhythm, when the door opened
and somebody came in.

Athalie, in Cecil's arms, turned her head, looking back over her
shoulder. Dane loomed tall in the twilight.