She looked about her, bright rat, tiny and enormous in her
own sight, aware now of her outer, now of her inner life, and sipped her
meed of success, full of the light happiness fashioned from the
admiration of creatures no bigger than herself. She laughed at one and
the other, bending towards them, listening to what they had to say,
without denying, without doubts, with only triumph in her heart; and,
the group shifting a little, a voice was able to say secretly at her
ear, "You look beautiful, but you are not exclusive...." Her sense of
triumph was not dimmed because her quick ear caught jealousy shading the
reproach in his voice.
She did not answer him, except to look at him; but they seemed to
forgive each other mutually as the figure of yellowish-white moved close
enough to tilt the bell skirt and take the figure of bluish-white into
his arms and dance with her. Calico and sheep's wool and painted flowers
went down the room under the low gas brackets, and her eyes, avoiding
his, looked out from a little personal silence into the far-off whirl of
the room, and heard the dimmed music and the scrape of feet.
For him the world was a pale dumb-show, and she the absorbing centre.
For her the world without was lit equally with his personality, the
glamour of which hung over all the scenes before her eyes with the
weight of the sky over the land.
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