Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/273

 gown of blue—his favorite color—and more modest than any other woman's. And at that instant Charles Hale, if he could have summoned the power, would have banished all others throughout that wide room and drawn the walls close to confine him and her together. But he could not speak to her; he could not even stop or delay in passing her; for she forbade it. The pupils of her eyes, when they directly met his, dilated; she could not control that; perhaps she did not wish to; then she looked down again at the spoon thoughtfully, as though nothing had happened. And he had to pass on.

Fortunately, he was the last of the group on the way to his table; so none of his companions could have noticed any emotion he betrayed. At the table, he chose for himself a seat from which he could watch her without making it conspicuous, and his attention was very intermittently on business that hour. He suddenly loathed the stupid, heavy talk; he hated the mass of solid, meaty dishes before him; suddenly he longed for a woman's voice,—light, fond, tantalizing, dissembling, passionate; to have before him woman's dishes, delicate, dainty, tempting, not filling and dulling to other sensations. Sybil Russell received her order, and he could watch, from his distance, her restrained, slight motions as she was served; and the sight of her so near, and yet so shut away, inflamed him. Was she here by mere chance, he wondered. If so, what a woman to meet him as she had; what a woman to achieve such restraint, even if she were here by design, having learned that he was to dine here this night. It must be, he realized, that she had come to see him—and show herself to him—from refusal longer to bear