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stretch of snow that was zig-zagged with the pattern of their mounting skis they raced in a series of straight fast runs into the valley. In a quarter of an hour they descended a slope that earlier in the day they had taken three hours to climb. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were sparkling, just as they had been three nights earlier when they had waltzed.
    â€œThere’s a Fancy Dress dance to-night,” he said.
    â€œI know there is. I’ve the cutest dress for it.”
    â€œDon’t you think it would be a good idea if we sat at the same table?”
    â€œI’d like that, thank you.”
    â€˜The cutest dress’ was a Viennese peasant dress. A white lawn blouse, laced at the throat, loose sleeved and buttoned at the wrist; the bodice was patterned with elaborate needlework; blue and red and green and yellow. The long billowing skirt was green; a deep sage green. But it was the wig that she was wearing that made her seem at the same time a different person, yet more herself. It was a flaxen wig with the hair worn loose upon her neck and knotted in a bow. It seemed so natural, so right for her to be wearing it that he would never have known that it was a wig unless he had already seen her close shingled hair.
    She laughed when he told her that.
    â€œI know, and it’s my own hair, too. I had it made up when I had it cut. I ought never to have had it cut; it’s not my line at all, but Roger likes it. It’s all wrong for me trying to be fashionable. Short skirts don’t suit me either. I’m too tall. I only feel really right in things like this. I don’t feel that I’m in fancy dress at all. And I feel so gay.” She slipped her arm through his. “I know you’re dying to take me to the bar. I’m dying to be taken there.”
    Her arm was again through his as they came back half an hour later. On her table a gold-foiled bottle was cooling in a steaming bucket. “You think of everything,” she said.
    It was half-past eleven. The gala evening was at its height. The leader of the band, a paper cap set rakishly across his eye, his back turned to the orchestra, appeared to be conducting the tempo of the dancers rather than his musicians. His arms beat to the syncopated rhythm. His body was bent now to one side, now the other, at one moment flung back, his eyes raised to the ceiling, his arms lifted above his head like a Mussulman’s at prayer; at another bent forward, his hands stretched out with distended beseeching fingers, as though he were goading each dancer to a keener rhythm.
    â€œWherever you go, whatever you do,
    I want you to know I love you.”
    As they danced Renée hummed the words.
    â€œI can’t begin to tell you what these three days have meant to me,” he said, “that first sight of you across the lounge ...”
    She shook her head. Her fingers tapped admonitorily against his shoulder; with her eyes half closed, with her lips framing the words, she seemed absorbed in a trance-like surrender to the music, utterly indifferent to her partner. But her hand tightened on his shoulder. She drew close to him; so close that they seemed one person, mentally and physically at one. Her head was against his cheek, the scent of tuberose was in her hair. His heart pounded with a taut expectancy. She couldn’t, surely she couldn’t dance with him like this and not mean anything.
    As the music stopped, she sighed. “I’m tired. It’s late. I think I’ll go.”
    With the blood singing along his veins he followed her.
    They stopped outside her door.
    â€œI can’t really believe,” he said, “that I’ll be gone tomorrow.”
    She smiled friendlily, teasingly too it seemed. Down the corridor came the sound of voices. She held out her hand.
    â€œThis is good-bye then, I suppose.”
    She paused, or seemed to pause before that ‘I suppose’. In her grey-green eyes there