“But this is absurd,” she said to herself, after a while; and abruptly raising her mask she broke in upon the duologue. The music had begun. He was asking Lily to dance, and she, waiting for Sylvia’s leave in a way that made Sylvia want to slap her, was hesitating.
“What rot, Lily!” she exclaimed, impatiently. “Of course you may dance.”
The young man turned toward Sylvia and smiled. A moment later he and Lily had waltzed away.
“Good God!” said Sylvia to herself. “Am I going mad? A youth smiles at me and I feel inclined to cry. What is this waltz they’re playing?”
She looked at one of the sheets of music, but the name was nowhere legible, and she nearly snatched it away from the player in exasperation. Nothing seemed to matter in the world except that she should know the name of this waltz. Without thinking what she was doing she thumped the clarinet-player on the shoulder, who stopped indignantly and asked if she was trying to knock his teeth out.
“What waltz are you playing? What waltz are you playing?”
“‘Waltz Amarousse.’ Perhaps you’ll punch one of the strings next time, miss?”
“Happy New-Year,” Sylvia laughed, and the clarinet-player with a disgusted glance turned round to his music again.
By the time the dance was over and the other two had rejoined her, Sylvia was laughing at herself; but they thought she was laughing at them. Fane and Lily danced several more dances together, and gradually Sylvia made up her mind that she disapproved of this new intimacy, this sudden invasion of Lily’s life from the past from which she should have cut herself off as completely as Sylvia had done from her own. What right had Lily to complicate their existence in this fashion? How unutterably dull this masquerade was! She whispered to Lily in the next interval that she was tired and wanted to go home.
The fog outside was very dense. Fane took their arms to cross the road, and Sylvia, though he caught her arm close to him, felt drearily how mechanical its gesture was toward her, how vital toward Lily. Neither of her companions spoke to each other, and she asked them questions about their former friendship, which Lily did not answer because she was evidently afraid of her annoyance, and which he did not answer because he did not hear. Sylvia had made up her mind that Fane should not enter Mulberry Cottage, when Lily whispered to her that she should ask him, but at the last moment she remembered his smile and invited him to supper. A strange shyness took possession of her, which she tried to cover by exaggeration, almost, she thought, hysterical fooling with Mrs. Gainsborough that lasted until two o’clock in the morning of New-Year’s day, when Michael Fane went home after exacting a promise from the two girls to lunch with him at Kettner’s that afternoon. Lily was so sleepy that she did not rise to see him out. Sylvia was glad of the indifference.