FullReads

It was exquisite. When it was over, she was dazed, and was scarcely breathing. She stood with him in the middle of the room as if she were alone in a remote place. He bent over her. She expected his lips on her bare shoulder, and waited. Yet they were not alone, they were not alone. It was cruel.

“’Twas good, wasn’t it, my darling?” he said to her, low and delighted. There was a strange impersonality about his low, exultant call that appealed to her irresistibly. Yet why was she aware of some part shut off in her? She pressed his arm, and he led her towards the door.

She was not aware of what she was doing, only a little grain of resistant trouble was in her. The man, possessed, yet with a superficial presence of mind, made way to the dining-room, as if to give her refreshment, cunningly working to his own escape with her. He was molten hot, filmed over with presence of mind, and bottomed with cold disbelief.

In the dining-room was Whiston, carrying coffee to the plain, neglected ladies. Elsie saw him, but felt as if he could not see her. She was beyond his reach and ken. A sort of fusion existed between her and the large man at her side. She ate her custard, but an incomplete fusion all the while sustained and contained her within the being of her employer.

But she was growing cooler. Whiston came up. She looked at him, and saw him with different eyes. She saw his slim, young man’s figure real and enduring before her. That was he. But she was in the spell with the other man, fused with him, and she could not be taken away.

“Have you finished your cribbage?” she asked, with hasty evasion of him.

“Yes,” he replied. “Aren’t you getting tired of dancing?”

“Not a bit,” she said.

“Not she,” said Adams heartily. “No girl with any spirit gets tired of dancing. —Have something else, Elsie. Come—sherry. Have a glass of sherry with us, Whiston. ”

Whilst they sipped the wine, Adams watched Whiston almost cunningly, to find his advantage.

“We’d better be getting back—there’s the music,” he said. “See the women get something to eat, Whiston, will you, there’s a good chap. ”

And he began to draw away. Elsie was drifting helplessly with him. But Whiston put himself beside them, and went along with them. In silence they passed through to the dancing-room. There Adams hesitated, and looked round the room. It was as if he could not see.

A man came hurrying forward, claiming Elsie, and Adams went to his other partner. Whiston stood watching during the dance. She was conscious of him standing there observant of her, like a ghost, or a judgment, or a guardian angel. She was also conscious, much more intimately and impersonally, of the body of the other man moving somewhere in the room. She still belonged to him, but a feeling of distraction possessed her, and helplessness. Adams danced on, adhering to Elsie, waiting his time, with the persistence of cynicism.

The dance was over. Adams was detained. Elsie found herself beside Whiston. There was something shapely about him as he sat, about his knees and his distinct figure, that she clung to. It was as if he had enduring form. She put her hand on his knee.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked.

“Everso,” she replied, with a fervent, yet detached tone.

“It’s going on for one o’clock,” he said.

“Is it?” she answered. It meant nothing to her.

“Should we be going?” he said.

She was silent. For the first time for an hour or more an inkling of her normal consciousness returned. She resented it.