Presently the father went to see how his daughter looked while dancing; the husband had evidently no such curiosity concerning his wife; and Colville went with the father, and looked at Miss Graham. She was very beautiful, and she obeyed the music as if it were her breath; her face was rapt, intense, full of an unsmiling delight, which shone in her dark eyes, glowing like low stars. Her abandon interested Colville, and then awed him; the spectacle of that young, unjaded capacity for pleasure touched him with a profound sense of loss. Suddenly Imogene caught sight of him, and with the coming of a second look in her eyes the light of an exquisite smile flashed over her face. His heart was in his throat.
“Your daughter?” asked the fond parent at his elbow. “That is mine yonder in red.”
Colville did not answer, nor look at the young lady in red. The dance was ceasing; the fragments of those kaleidoscopic radiations were dispersing themselves; the tormented piano was silent.
The officer whom Imogene had danced with brought her to Mrs. Bowen, and resigned her with the regulation bow, hanging his head down before him as if submitting his neck to the axe. She put her hand in Colville’s arm, where he stood beside Mrs. Bowen. “Oh, do take me to get something to eat!”
In the supper-room she devoured salad and ices with a childish joy in them. The place was jammed, and she laughed from her corner at Colville’s struggles in getting the things for her and bringing them to her. While she was still in the midst of an ice, the faint note of the piano sounded. “Oh, they’re beginning again. It’s the Lancers!” she said, giving him the plate back. She took his arm again; she almost pulled him along on their return.
“Why don’t you dance?” she demanded mockingly.
“I would if you’d let me dance with you.”
“Oh, that’s impossible! I’m engaged ever so many deep.” She dropped his arm instantly at sight of a young Englishman who seemed to be looking for her. This young Englishman had a zeal for dancing that was unsparing; partners were nothing to him except as a means of dancing; his manner expressed a supreme contempt for people who made the slightest mistake, who danced with less science or less conscience than himself. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said, in a tone of cold rebuke, without looking at her. “We’ve been waiting.”
Colville wished to beat him, but Imogene took his rebuke meekly, and murmured some apologies about not hearing the piano before. He hurried her off without recognising Colville’s existence in any way.
The undancing husband of the dancing wife was boring himself in a corner; Colville decided that the chances with him were better than with the fond father, and joined him, just as a polite officer came up and entreated him to complete a set. “Oh, I never danced in my life,” he replied; and then he referred the officer to Colville. “Don’t you dance?”
“I used to dance,” Colville began, while the officer stood looking patiently at him. This was true. He used to dance the Lancers, too, and very badly, seventeen years before. He had danced it with Lina Ridgely and the other one, Mrs. Milbury. His glance wandered to the vacant place on the floor; it was the same set which Miss Graham was in; she smiled and beckoned derisively. A vain and foolish ambition fired him. “Oh yes, I can dance a little,” he said.
A little was quite enough for the eager officer. He had Colville a partner in an instant, and the next he was on the floor.
“Oh, what fun!” cried Miss Graham; but the fun had not really begun yet.
Colville had forgotten everything about the Lancers. He walked round like a bear in a pen: he capered to and fro with a futile absurdity; people poked him hither and thither; his progress was attended by rending noises from the trains over which he found his path. He smiled and cringed, and apologised to the hardening faces of the dancers: even Miss Graham’s face had become very grave.
“This won’t do,” said the Englishman at last, with cold insolence. He did not address himself to anyone; he merely stopped; they all stopped, and Colville was effectively expelled the set; another partner was found for his lady, and he wandered giddily away. He did not know where to turn; the whole room must have seen what an incredible ass he had made of himself, but Mrs. Bowen looked as if she had not seen.
He went up to her, resolved to make fun of himself at the first sign she gave of being privy to his disgrace. But she only said, “Have you found your way to the supper-room yet?”
“Oh yes; twice,” he answered, and kept on talking with her and Madame Uccelli. After five minutes or so something occurred to Colville. “Have you found the way to the supper-room yet, Mrs. Bowen?”
“No!” she owned, with a small, pathetic laugh, which expressed a certain physical faintness, and reproached him with insupportable gentleness for his selfish obtuseness.
“Let me show you the way,” he cried.
“Why, I am rather hungry,” said Mrs. Bowen, taking his arm, with a patient arrangement first of her fan, her bouquet, and her train, and then moving along by his side with a delicate-footed pace, which insinuated and deprecated her dependence upon him.
There were only a few people in the supper-room, and they had it practically to themselves. She took a cup of
