"
He glanced over his shoulder. Muriel was resting her brilliant cheek
against the lapel of Maury Noble's dinner coat and her powdered left arm
was apparently twisted around his head. One was impelled to wonder why
she failed to seize the nape of his neck with her hand. Her eyes, turned
ceiling-ward, rolled largely back and forth; her hips swayed, and as she
danced she kept up a constant low singing. This at first seemed to be a
translation of the song into some foreign tongue but became eventually
apparent as an attempt to fill out the metre of the song with the only
words she knew--the words of the title--
"He's a rag-picker,
A rag-picker;
A rag-time picking man,
Rag-picking, picking, pick, pick,
Rag-pick, pick, pick."
--and so on, into phrases still more strange and barbaric. When she
caught the amused glances of Anthony and Gloria she acknowledged them
only with a faint smile and a half-closing of her eyes, to indicate that
the music entering into her soul had put her into an ecstatic and
exceedingly seductive trance.
The music ended and they returned to their table, whose solitary but
dignified occupant arose and tendered each of them a smile so
ingratiating that it was as if he were shaking their hands and
congratulating them on a brilliant performance.
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