Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/74

THE IVORY TOWER in fact had; with the result for our young woman of feeling helped, by the lightest of turns, not to be awkward herself, or really, what came to the same thing, not to be anything herself. It was a fine perception she had had before—of how Cissy could on occasion "do" for one, and this, all extraordinarily and in a sort of double sense, by quenching one in her light at the very moment she offered it for guidance. She quenched Gussy, she was the single person who could, Gussy almost gruntingly consenting; she quenched Minnie Undle, she cheapened every other presence, scattering lovely looks, multiplying happy touches, grasping Rosanna for possession, yet at the same time, as with her free hand, waving away every other connection: so that a minute or two later—for it scarce seemed more—the pair were isolated, still on the verandah somewhere, but intensely confronted and talking at ease, or in a way that had to pass for ease, with its not mattering at all whether their companions, dazzled and wafted off, had dispersed and ceased to be, or whether they themselves had simply been floated to where they wished on the great surge of the girl's grace. The girl's grace was, after its manner, such a force that Miss Gaw had had repeatedly, on past occasions, to doubt even while she recognised—for could a young creature you weren't quite sure of use a weapon of such an edge only for good? The young creature seemed at any rate now as never yet to 60