“Thank you,” she said. It was easy this time to restrain the impulse to laugh. The remark, she thought, was as badly timed as his dancing but a verbal clown is never as comical as one who actually tumbles about the arena. She hadn’t trusted herself to think of a witty retort. The temptation to put a sting into it would have been too strong and besides a simple “thank you” smacked of the sincere modesty which she knew he looked for in her.

He led her about in a small circle, holding her more tightly than was necessary. She hoped the music would stop soon.

The orchestra let the number fade out on a series of soft measures. The man and the girl returned to their table. A waiter refilled their glasses and withdrew. They sat in silence. He opened his hand on the table and she put her own in it in a show of understanding. His eyes caressed her dark hair, the fine, even features, the soft bare shoulders.

“I feel as if something big is happening to me, Terry,” he said. “I don’t know how to describe it. I suppose it would sound silly. I’m supposed to be the man of action, you know, the extrovert. Ask anybody if he’d believe Jack Colin was ever anything else?” He paused, put into his face what was meant to be a wistful look. “Sometimes people with dreams in their hearts, people who could have been poets if they hadn’t hidden their true natures from the eyes of the world, are forced into lives of action.”

She forced herself to return the pressure of his hand.

“I’ve found something in you, Terry,” he went on. “Something I’ve needed for a long time. It makes everything else look small by comparison.”

Was it possible that anyone had ever swallowed a line like that, she wondered. Some must have. Those women who wouldn’t notice the shrewd lines around his eyes, the bullish neck, the loose, flabby mouth. Perhaps they had even liked him without having an axe to grind.

“I’m glad,” she said.

He rubbed her fingers with his own. Her hand was growing clammy from his perspiring palm. She saw him floundering for something with which to follow up.

A thin, sallow man approached the table. Colin looked up at him and frowned. The man barely looked at the girl.

“My God,” he said to Colin. “It’s a good thing there aren’t twice as many joints in this town or I’d have had some more places to look. Where you been all day?”

“My partner, Mr. Rafael, Miss Stafford,” Colin said. He looked sternly at Rafael. “Meet Miss Stafford, Sam.”

Rafael nodded quickly in Terry’s direction. Without waiting to be asked, he yanked a chair over from the next table and sat down.