'Scarcely ever. Do you?'
'My people give a dance every Christmas.'
'This isn't half a bad floor,' Rachel said. Hirst did not attempt to answer her platitude. He sat quite silent, staring at the dancers. After three minutes the silence became so intolerable to Rachel that she was goaded to advance another commonplace about the beauty of the night. Hirst interrupted her ruthlessly.
'Was that all nonsense what you said the other day about being a Christian and having no education?' he asked.
'It was practically true,' she replied. 'But I also play the piano very well,' she said,
'better, I expect than any one in this room. You are the most distinguished man in England, aren't you?' she asked shyly.
'One of the three,' he corrected.
Helen whirling past here tossed a fan into Rachel's lap.
'She is very beautiful,' Hirst remarked.
They were again silent. Rachel was wondering whether he thought her also nice-looking; St. John was considering the immense difficulty of talking to girls who had no experience of life. Rachel had obviously never thought or felt or seen anything, and she might be intelligent or she might be just like all the rest. But Hewet's taunt rankled in his mind-'you don't know how to get on with women,' and he was determined to profit by this opportunity. Her evening-clothes bestowed on her just that degree of unreality and distinction which made it romantic to speak to her, and stirred a desire to talk, which irritated him because he did not know how to begin. He glanced at her, and she seemed to him very remote and inexplicable, very young and chaste. He drew a sigh, and began.
'About books now. What have you read? Just Shakespeare and the Bible?'
'I haven't read many classics,' Rachel stated. She was slightly annoyed by his jaunty and rather unnatural manner, while his masculine acquirements induced her to take a very modest view of her own power.
'D'you mean to tell me you've reached the age of twenty-four without reading Gibbon?' he demanded.
'Yes, I have,' she answered.
'Mon Dieu!' he exclaimed, throwing out his hands. 'You must begin to-morrow. I shall send you my copy. What I want to know is--' he looked at her critically. 'You see, the problem is, can one really talk to you? Have you got a mind, or are you like the rest of your sex? You seem to me absurdly young compared with men of your age.' Rachel looked at him but said nothing.
'About Gibbon,' he continued. 'D'you think you'll be able to appreciate him? He's the test, of course. It's awfully difficult to tell about women,' he continued, 'how much, I mean, is due to lack of training, and how much is native incapacity. I don't see myself why you shouldn't understand--only I suppose you've led an absurd life until now-- you've just walked in a crocodile, I suppose, with your hair down your back.' The music was again beginning. Hirst's eye wandered about the room in search of Mrs. Ambrose. With the best will in the world he was conscious that they were not getting on well together.
'I'd like awfully to lend you books,' he said, buttoning his gloves, and rising from his seat. 'We shall meet again. I'm going to leave you now.'
He got up and left her.
Rachel looked round. She felt herself surrounded, like a child at a party, by the faces of strangers all hostile to her, with hooked noses and sneering, indifferent eyes. She was by a window, she pushed it open with a jerk. She stepped out into the garden. Her eyes swam with tears of rage.
'Damn that man!' she exclaimed, having acquired some of Helen's words. 'Damn his insolence!'
She stood in the middle of the pale square of light which the window she had opened threw upon the grass. The forms of great black trees rose massively in front of her. She stood still, looking at them, shivering slightly with anger and excitement. She heard the trampling and swinging of the dancers behind her, and the rhythmic sway of the waltz music.
'There are trees,' she said aloud. Would the trees make up for St. John Hirst? She would be a Persian princess far from civilisation, riding her horse upon the mountains alone, and making her women sing to her in the evening, far from all this, from the strife and men and women--a form came out of the shadow; a little red light burnt high up in its blackness.
'Miss Vinrace, is it?' said Hewet, peering at her. 'You were dancing with Hirst?'
'He's made me furious!' she cried vehemently. 'No one's any right to be insolent!'
