"If those dances are free, Miss Blount, may I ask you for them?" says Stephen, pleasantly.
"You can have them with pleasure," replies she, smiling kindly at him.
"Don't stay too long in the night air, Dulce," says Roger, with the utmost unconcern, turning to go indoors again. This is the unkindest cut of all. If he had gone away angry, silent, revengeful, she might perhaps have forgiven him, but this careful remembrance of her, this calm and utterly indifferent concern for her comfort fills her with vehement anger.
The blood forsakes her lips, and her eyes grow bright with passionate tears.
"Why do you take things so much to heart?" says Stephen, in a low voice. "Do you care so greatly then about an unpleasant speech from him? I should have thought you might have grown accustomed to his brusquerie by this."
"He wasn't brusque just now," says Dulce. "He was very kind, was he not? Careful about my catching cold, and that."
"Very," says Gower, significantly. "Yet there are tears in your eyes. What a baby you are."
"No, I am not," says Dulce, mournfully. "A baby is an adorable thing, and I am very far from being that."
"If babies are to be measured by their adorableness, I should say you are the very biggest baby I ever saw," declares Mr. Gower, with such an amount of settled conviction in his tone that Dulce, in spite of the mortification that is still rankling in her breast, laughs aloud. Delighted with his success, Gower laughs, too, and taking her hand draws it within his arm.
"Come, do not let us forget Roger gave you to me for this dance," he says. "If only for that act of grace, I forgive him all his misdeeds." With a last lingering glance at the beauty of the night, together they return to the ballroom.