"Yes. I came up just now and heard your voice and Béla's. I waited on the off-chance of getting a word with you."
"I mustn't stop, Andor. Mother will be wondering."
"No, she won't," he retorted with undisguised bitterness. "The mother who sent you on this abominable and humiliating errand won't worry much after you."
"No one seems to worry much about me, do they, Andor?" she said, a little wistfully.
He drew a little closer to her, so close that he could feel her shoulder under the shawl quivering against his arm. Her many petticoats brushed about his shins, and he could hear her quick, warm breath as it came and went. He bent his head quite close to her, as he had done that day, five years ago, in the mazes of the csárdás, and now—as then—his lips almost touched her soft young neck.
"Then why should you worry about them, Elsa?" he whispered slowly in her ear. "Why shouldn't you let them all be?"
"Let them all be?" she said. "But everyone will be wondering if I don't go back—at least for supper."
"I don't mean about the dance and the supper, Elsa," he continued, still speaking in a whisper and striving to subdue the hoarseness in his voice which was engendered by the passion which burned in his veins, "I don't only mean to-night. I mean . . . for good." . . .
"For good?" she repeated slowly.
"Let me take you away, Elsa," he entreated, "away from here. Leave all these rough, indifferent and selfish folk. Come out with me to Australia, and let all these people be."