When he had shaken hands Hildred found a minute in which to whisper, "Tom, you're the Greek god you read about in novels. Don't feel shy. All you need do is to stand around and be ornamental. Your rôle is the romantic unknown." She returned after the next bout of "receiving." "You and I will have the supper dance. I've insisted on that, and mother's given in. Don't get too far out of reach, so that I can put my hand on you when I want you."
He danced a little, chiefly with girls whom no one else would dance with and to whom some member of the Ansley family introduced him. When not dancing he returned to the gallery, where he leaned against a convenient pillar and looked on. It was what he best liked doing. Liking it, he did it well. He could hear people ask who he was. He could hear some Harvard fellow answer that he was the Whitelaw Baby. Once he heard a lady say, as she passed behind his back, "Well, he does look like the Whitelaws, doesn't he?"
The New York papers had recalled the Whitelaw baby to the public mind in connection with the ball given a few weeks earlier to "bring out" Lily Whitelaw. Once in so often the whole story was rehearsed, making the younger Whitelaws sick of it, and their parents suffer again. The fact that Tad and Lily Whitelaw were there that night gave piquancy to the presence of the romantic stranger. His stature, his good looks, his natural dignity, together with the mystery as to who he was, made him in a measure the figure of the evening.
From where he stood by his pillar in the gallery he recognized Lily in the swirl below, a slim, sinuous creature in shimmering green. All her motions were serpentine. She might have been Salome; she might also have been a shop girl, self-conscious and eager to be noticed. Whatever was outrageous in the dances of that autumn she did for the benefit of her elders.
When she turned toward him he could see that she had an insolent kind of beauty. It was a dark, spoiled beauty that seemed lowering because of her heavy Whitelaw eyebrows, and possibly a little tragic. In thought he could hear Hildred singing, as she had sung when he stayed with them at Dublin in the spring, "Is she kind as she is fair? For beauty lives by kindness." Lily's beauty would not. It was an imperious beauty, willful and inconsiderate.
He saw Hildred dancing too. She danced as if dancing were an incident and not an occupation. She had left more important things to do it; she would go back to more important things again. While she was at it she took it gayly, gracefully, as all in the evening's work, but as something of no consequence. She was in tissue of gold like an oriental princess, a gold gleam in her oriental eyes. An ermine stole as a protection against draughts was sometimes thrown over her shoulders, but more often across her arm.
He noticed the poise of her head. No other head in the world could have been so nobly held, so superbly independent. Its character was in its simplicity. Fashion did not exist for it. The glossy dark hair was brushed back from forehead and temples into a knot which made neatness a distinction. Distinction was the chief beauty in the profile, with its rounded chin, its firm, small, well-curved lips, and a nose deliciously snub. Decision, freedom, unconsciousness of self, were betrayed in all her attitudes and movements. Merely to watch her roused in him a dull, aching jealousy for Lily. He surprised himself by regretting that Lily hadn't been like this.
Imperious, willful, and inconsiderate Lily seemed to him again as she drank champagne and smoked cigarettes at supper. The party at her table, which was near the one at which he sat with Hildred, was jovial and noisy. Lily's partner, a fellow whom he knew by sight at Harvard, drank freely, laughed loudly, and now and then slapped the table. Lily too slapped the table, though she did it with her fan.
In the early morning—it might have been two o'clock—Tom found himself accidentally near her when Hildred happened to be passing.