Chapter II

1

It was about three o’clock now; the ballroom looked a vast place in which three couples were entirely surrounded by parquet floor; and the band was become ecstatic with weariness and repetition. They sang and yelled and rolled their eyes, they crooned and cooned and beat their drums.

“Josh--ua! Josh--ua!
Why don’t you call and see mamma?
Josh--ua! Josh--ua!
Nicer than lemon-squash you are!
Yes, by gosh you are!
Josh--u--a--a....”

Ivor and Magdalen Gray danced silently. For several minutes he was not conscious of her, but only of the pleasure of dancing with her. She was scarcely there at all, she moved so easily with him. She was so wonderfully there that she was scarcely there at all--which may sound silly, but is nevertheless a first principle to be learnt by all women who would be good dancers.

“I am liking this very much,” he said at last.

“I too!” the light voice said; but so seriously that it surprised him into looking for the first time at the face beside his shoulder; and he saw that, if indeed she was liking it, it must be in a very subtle way, for she looked sad and tired.

“Maybe you’d rather we didn’t dance?” he asked tentatively.

“Oh, no!” and the dark eyes were lifted to his in an almost comic protest; and they suddenly seemed to introduce herself to him. “I don’t wish to seem conceited, Mr. Marlay, but there are too many people waiting to see me home. I would have been safely in my bed an hour ago but that there were so many people to see me safely into it. But if _you_ would rather not dance----?”

“But this is my first to-night!” he protested.

“Although, of course,” she mocked him, “you have had your offers?”

“I’ve had one, anyway,” he seriously agreed. “Lovely she was, and a famous dancer--but I thought, you know, that I would like to begin and end my night with a woman of quality.” That made her smile a little smile. Courteous cheek....

They danced on silently, softly. Their feet played tricks to the beat of the tireless measure, that exquisitely asinine blare which is England’s punishment for having lost America.... This is the nicest thing that’s happened to me for a very long time, Ivor thought, taking pleasure in her movement and her looks. Her hair is trying to look black, he thought, but it’s really dark blue, like her eyes.

It was thick hair, soft and thick and Latin, and it was coiled softly about her ears in loose dark masses: a dark setting for her white face, which wasn’t technically beautiful, like Lois Lamprey’s and Virginia’s, but had all the inner meaning of beauty. Her mouth was large and very mobile, a tentative and adventurous mouth.... And all the time he was conscious that she was abstracted, that she wasn’t thinking of him at all. And that was pleasant, he felt exceedingly at peace with her. So he didn’t press her to talk, he made no effort to amuse her; and that is the most intelligent thing that Ivor Marlay did that night.

As they danced past the large doorway he saw two men standing there, one dark and the other gray, talking. She had seen the direction of his eyes, for she said:--

“The distinguished-looking person with the iron-gray hair and the lovely corporation is my husband. But besides being my husband he is a great traveller. Not an explorer, mind you, but just a great traveller. He spends most of his time in travelling about extremely foreign countries, and the rest of his time he spends in feeling extremely foreign in his own.” Mrs. Gray had a delightful way, as she said things, of laughing without laughter, of being intimate without intimacy.

And the other one, Ivor thought, is “Rodney....”

The light voice went on: “And the other one, with the severe expression peculiar to celibate Englishmen of over forty, is Rodney West, the K.C., whom you’ll never really get to know unless you murder or get murdered by some one....”

And, suddenly, Ivor had an acute feeling that he was “up against” those two men, standing there in the doorway in all the conviction of middle years and vast experience. It was the silliest and absurdest feeling he had ever had, but he felt it acutely, and it made him suddenly look quite set and grim--and, of course, sulky. They were now in the far corner of the ballroom, away from the guardians of the door. And Magdalen Gray wondered at his abrupt stopping of the dance, away in the corner there, and at the way he looked down at her, so darkly sulky: the absurd young grimness of this stranger surprised her back into her gaiety.

“Oh, but you look like a man who has discovered something!” she laughed at him. “Picture of young gentleman as pirate on sighting fair merchantman....”

“I want very much,” Ivor said, “to see you again, Mrs. Gray.”

She liked him for refusing to be made ridiculous. It was most unusual in men....

“But aren’t you bullying me just a little bit--and so early in our acquaintance?” she asked quietly--keeping all the foolery in her words and none in her manner, as was her way. “But maybe that’s because you think it’s going to be difficult to see me?”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking--and the previous thought to that was that you were worthwhile,” he dared to say. It was those sceptical-looking eyebrows that helped him to say things like that and look as though he had meant to say something else....

“But I’m just a little tired of being thought ‘worthwhile’!” she cried, with a surprisingly deep impatience.

“And I’d like, please, to be allowed to do the thinking first, just for a change....” And she passed a hand over her eyes and slightly pressed her fingers against her temples, as though to soothe the sickness of a headache.

He was nervously conscious that he had made a mistake. He couldn’t know that the mistake lay in his liking her at all, who was to-night surfeited with men’s likings.... The band had stopped, and they were walking now across the bare expanse of floor towards the door. The two men of middle years had but a second before left it, so obviously as though she were to come downstairs after them. And Ivor’s eyes involuntarily followed them through the doorway.

“All the same----” he began sulkily.

“There’s only the telephone-book between us, you know,” she chose to soothe him.

“Ah, now I know something about you!” he said eagerly. They were out of the ballroom now; she cast a swift look down the stairs; and she was going away.

“I know now,” he said very quickly, “what I’ve never known before, for I’ve never before met a womanly woman. I know that in the beginning you are profound about superficial things, and that in the end you are superficial about profound things. And I know too, that when you are accused of that you will answer, oh so honestly: ‘But isn’t this how things do end, and is a flower less beautiful because it must die?’”

The wilful arrogance of that moment is quite the best thing in the extravagances of a cub’s life. Cheek so colossal and so uncalled-for, on such a very slight acquaintance, becomes something quite else, something much higher. And Magdalen Gray, following the men of middle years down the stairs, was gay where she had thought to be miserable--that young man was laughing at her, he was liking her with laughter! It was most unusual in men! It was quite pleasant and unusual....