Page:The Prussian officer, and other stories, Lawrence, 1914.djvu/252

 In the dining-room was Whiston, carrying coffee to the plain, neglected ladies. Elsie saw him, but felt as if he could not see her. She was beyond his reach and ken. A sort of fusion existed between her and the large man at her side. She ate her custard, but an incomplete fusion all the while sustained and contained within the being of her employer.

But she was growing cooler. Whiston came up. She looked at him, and saw him with different eyes. She saw his slim, young man’s figure real and enduring before her. That was he. But she was in the spell with the other man, fused with him, and she could not be taken away.

“Have you finished your cribbage?” she asked, with hasty evasion of him.

“Yes,” he replied. “Aren’t you getting tired of dancing?”

“Not a bit,” she said.

“Not she,” said Adams heartily. “No girl with any spirit gets tired of dancing.—Have something else, Elsie. Come—sherry. Have a glass of sherry with us, Whiston.”

Whilst they sipped the wine, Adams watched Whiston almost cunningly, to find his advantage.

“We’d better be getting back—there’s the music,” he said. “See the women get something to eat, Whiston, will you, there’s a good chap.”

And he began to draw away. Elsie was drifting helplessly with him. But Whiston put himself beside them, and went along with them. In silence they passed through to the dancing-room. There Adams hesitated, and looked round the room. It was as if he could not see.