Page:The Prussian officer, and other stories, Lawrence, 1914.djvu/254

 That was no answer, no reason. It conveyed nothing to her. She sat detached from him. Across the room Sam Adams glanced at her. She sat there exposed for him.

“You don’t want to be too free with Sam Adams,” said Whiston cautiously, suffering. “You know what he is.”

“How, free?” she asked.

“Why—you don’t want to have too much to do with him.”

She sat silent. He was forcing her into consciousness of her position. But he could not get hold of her feelings, to change them. She had a curious, perverse desire that he should not.

“I like him,” she said.

“What do you find to like in him?” he said, with a hot heart.

“I don’t know—but I like him,” she said.

She was immutable. He sat feeling heavy and dulled with rage. He was not clear as to what he felt. He sat there unliving whilst she danced. And she, distracted, lost to herself between the opposing forces of the two men, drifted. Between the dances, Whiston kept near to her. She was scarcely conscious. She glanced repeatedly at her card, to see when she would dance again with Adams, half in desire, half in dread. Sometimes she met his steady, glaucous eye as she passed him in the dance. Sometimes she saw the steadiness of his flank as he danced. And it was always as if she rested on his arm, were borne along, upborne by him, away from herself. And always there was present the other’s antagonism. She was divided.