Having no other business in hand, Barney devoted himself to that business which ran like a core through all his businesses--paying court to Maggie.

And when Barney wished to be a courtier, there were few of his class who could give a better superficial interpretation of the role; and in this particular instance he was at the advantage of being in earnest.

He forced the most expensive tidbits announced by the dinner card upon Maggie; he gallantly and very gracefully put on and removed, as required by circumstances, the green cobweb of a scarf Maggie had brought to the roof as protection against the elements; and when he took the dancing-floor with her, he swung her about and hopped up and down and stepped in and out with all the skill of a master of the modern perversion of dancing.

Barney was really good enough to have been a professional dancer had his desires not led him toward what seemed to him a more exciting and more profitable career.
Maggie, not to rouse Barney's suspicions, played her role as well as he did his own.

And most of the other diners, a fraction of the changing two or three hundred thousand people from the South and West who choose New York as the best of all summer resorts, gazed upon this handsome couple with their intricate steps which were timed with such effortless and enviable accuracy, and excitedly believed that they were beholding two distinguished specimens of what their home papers persisted in calling New York's Four Hundred.
Maggie got back to her room with the feeling that she had staved off Barney and her numerous other dilemmas for the immediate present.