Читать книгу The Temptress (La tierra de todos) онлайн

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The Marquis got up as though at an imperial command, and husband and wife threaded their way in and out among the other couples.

When they returned to their table, Elena was protesting with comic indignation.

“Here I’ve come all the way to Montmartre to dance with my own husband...!”

With an affectionate glance at Fontenoy she went on,

“Of course I wouldn’t think of expecting you to dance with me. You don’t know how, and anyway it’s too frivolous. Some of your stockholders might see you, and they’d be sure to lose confidence in you, if they saw you in this sort of place.”

Turning to Robledo, she inquired,

“Don’t you dance?”

The engineer pretended to be scandalized at the suggestion. Where could he have learned the modern steps? The only ones he knew were those of the Chilian “cueca” that his peons always danced on pay days, or the “pericon” and the “gato” as danced by some old gaucho to the clatter of his spurs.

“So, I shall have to sit here! That’s what happens when I go out with three men.... I never saw anything so ridiculous!”