“I don’t know,” responded Miriam. “Is he telling me I am a fool?” she thought. “It’s true, but no one has the courage to tell me.”
“It is most strange. I talk to you here as I will. It is simple and fatal”; the supporting arm became a gentle encirclement and Miriam’s heart beat softly in her ears. “I go to-morrow to Paris to the branch of my father’s business that is managed there by my brother. And I go then to New York to establish a branch there. I shall be away then, perhaps a year. Shall I find you here?”
A quick crunching on the gravel pathway just in front of them made them both hold their breath to listen. Someone was standing on the grass near Max’s side of the coffin. A match spat and flared and Miriam’s heart was shaken by Ted’s new, eager, frightened voice. “Aren’t you ever going to dance with me again?”
She had seen the whiteness of his face and his cold, delicate, upright figure. In spirit she had leapt to her feet and faltered his name. All the world she knew had fallen into newness. This was certainty. Ted would never leave her. But it was Max who was standing up and saying richly in the blackness left by the burnt-out match, “All in good time, Burton. Miss Miriam is engaged to me for this dance.” Her faint “of course, Ted,” was drowned in the words which her partner sang after the footsteps retreating rapidly along the gravel path: “We’re just coming!”
“I suppose they’ve begun the next dance,” she said, rising decisively and brushing at her velvet skirt with trembling hands.
“Our dance. Let us go and dance our dance.”
They walked a little apart steadily along up through the kitchen garden, their unmatched footsteps sounding loudly upon the gravel between remarks made by Max. Miriam heard them and heard the voice of Max. But she neither listened nor responded.
She began to talk and laugh at random as they neared the lawn lit by the glaring uncurtained windows.
Consulting his scrutinising face as they danced easily in the as yet half-empty room, he humming the waltz which swung with their movement, she found narrow, glinting eyes looking into her own; strange eyes that knew all about a big business and were going to Paris and New York. His stranger’s face was going away, to be washed and shaved innumerable times, keeping its assurance in strange places she knew nothing about.
Here, just for these few hours, laughing at Ted. A phrase flashed through her brain, “He’s brought Ted to his senses.” She flushed and laughed vaguely and danced with a feeling of tireless strength and gaiety. She knew the phrase was not her own. It was one Nan Babington could have used. It excited her. It meant that real things were going to happen, she could bear herself proudly in the room. She rippled complacently at Max. The room was full of whirling forms, swelling and shrinking as they crossed and recrossed the line between the clear vision rimmed by her glasses and the surrounding bright confusion. Swift, rhythmic movement, unbroken and unjostled, told her how well they were dancing. She was secure, landed in life, dancing carelessly out and out to a life of her own.