Lena moved without exertion, rather indolently, and her hand often accented
the rhythm softly on her partner's shoulder. She smiled if one spoke to
her, but seldom answered. The music seemed to put her into a soft, waking
dream, and her violet-coloured eyes looked sleepily and confidingly at one
from under her long lashes. When she sighed she exhaled a heavy perfume of
sachet powder. To dance `Home, Sweet Home,' with Lena was like coming in
with the tide. She danced every dance like a waltz, and it was always the
same waltz--the waltz of coming home to something, of inevitable, fated
return. After a while one got restless under it, as one does under the
heat of a soft, sultry summer day.
When you spun out into the floor with Tony, you didn't return to anything.
You set out every time upon a new adventure. I liked to schottische with
her; she had so much spring and variety, and was always putting in new
steps and slides. She taught me to dance against and around the
hard-and-fast beat of the music. If, instead of going to the end of the
railroad, old Mr. Shimerda had stayed in New York and picked up a living
with his fiddle, how different Antonia's life might have been!
Antonia often went to the dances with Larry Donovan, a passenger conductor
who was a kind of professional ladies' man, as we said.
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