"We did." Surely she heard a sound
as if he had caught a quick breath. But after it there were a few
more steps and another brief space of silence.
"I knew," he said next, very low. "I KNEW that we played together
in a garden."
"You did not know when you first looked at me tonight." Innocently
revealing that even his first glance had been no casual thing to
her.
But his answer revealed something too.
"You were near the door--just coming into the room. I didn't know
why you startled me. I kept looking for you afterwards in the
crowd."
"I didn't see you look," said Robin softly, revealing still more
in her utter inexperience.
"No, because you wouldn't look at me--you were too much engaged.
Do you like this step?"
"I like them all."
"Do you always dance like this? Do you always make your partner
feel as if he had danced with you all his life?"
"It is--because we played together in the garden," said Robin
and then was quite terrified at herself. Because after all--after
all they were only two conventional young people meeting for the
first time at a dance, not knowing each other in the least. It
was really the first time. The meeting of two children could not
count. But the beating and strange elated inward tremor would not
stop.
As for him he felt abnormal also and he was usually a very normal
creature. It was abnormal to be so excited that he found himself,
as it were, upon another plane, because he had recognized and was
dancing with a girl he had not seen since she was five or six.
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