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“You’ve danced before?”

“No ma’am.”

“Take the head of the line, please. Watch Mr. Kamps. Now then, all together, please.”

And they were off again.

At 9.45 Tyler Kamps and Gunner Moran were standing in the crowded doorway of the ballroom upstairs, in a panic lest some girl should ask them to dance; fearful lest they be passed by. Little Miss Hall had brought them to the very door, had left them there with a stern injunction not to move, and had sped away in search of partners for them.

Gunner Moran’s great scarlet hands were knotted into fists. His Adam’s apple worked convulsively.

“Le’s duck,” he whispered hoarsely. The jackie band in the corner crashed into the opening bars of a fox trot.

“Oh, it don’t seem–” But it was plain that Tyler was weakening. Another moment and they would have turned and fled. But coming toward them was little Miss Hall, her blonde head bobbing in and out among the swaying couples. At her right and left was a girl. Her bright eyes held her two victims in the doorway. They watched her approach, and were helpless to flee. They seemed to be gripped by a horrible fascination. Their limbs were fluid.

A sort of groan rent Moran. Miss Hall and the two girls stood before them, cool, smiling, unruffled.

“Miss Cunningham, this is Mr. Tyler Kamps. Mr. Moran, Miss Cunningham. Miss Drew–Mr. Moran, Mr. Kamps.”

The boy and the man gulped, bowed, mumbled something.

“Would you like to dance?” said Miss Cunningham, and raised limpid eyes to Tyler’s.

“Why–I–you see I don’t know how. I just started to–“

“Oh, that’s all right,” Miss Cunningham interrupted, cheerfully. “We’ll try it.” She stood in position and there seemed to radiate from her a certain friendliness, a certain assurance and understanding that was as calming as it was stimulating. In a sort of daze Tyler found himself moving over the floor in time to the music. He didn’t know that he was being led, but he was. She didn’t try to talk. He breathed a prayer of thanks for that. She seemed to know, somehow, about those four straight steps and two to the right and two to the left, and four again, and turn-two, turn-four. He didn’t know that he was counting aloud, desperately. He didn’t even know, just then, that this was a girl he was dancing with. He seemed to move automatically, like a marionette. He never was quite clear about those first ten minutes of his ballroom experience.

The music ceased. A spat of applause. Tyler mopped his head, and his hands, and applauded too, like one in a dream. They were off again for the encore.

Five minutes later he found himself seated next Miss Cunningham in a chair against the wall. And for the first time since their meeting the mists of agony cleared before his gaze and he saw Miss Cunningham as a tall, slim, dark-haired girl, with a glint of mischief in her eye, and a mouth that looked as if she were trying to keep from smiling.

“Why don’t you?” Tyler asked, and was aghast.

“Why don’t I what?”

“Smile if you want to.”

At which the glint in her eye and the hidden smile on her lips sort of met and sparked and she laughed. Tyler laughed, too, and then they laughed together and were friends.

Miss Cunningham’s conversation was the kind of conversation that a nice girl invariably uses in putting at ease a jackie whom she has just met at a war recreation dance. Nothing could have been more commonplace or unoriginal, but to Tyler Kamps the brilliance of a Madame de Stael would have sounded trivial and uninteresting in comparison.

“Where are you from?”

“Why, I’m from Texas, ma’am. Marvin, Texas.”

“Is that so? So many of the boys are from Texas. Are you out at the station or on one of the boats?”

“I’m on the Station. Yes ma’am.”

“Do you like the navy?”

“Yes ma’am, I do. I sure do. You know there isn’t a drafted man in the navy. No ma’am! We’re all enlisted men.”