She laughed as she pulled on her long white glove.
"Am I such a gorgon in my new gown?"
His eyes went slowly over her with a kind of worship in them. She trembled slightly. "Not one pretty word for all my pains?"
He knelt down before her, bent the dark head, and kissed her little white shoes.
As they met a moment in the lancers, Val said: "I wish she could have seen the old Fort to-night. She loved splendor, too." She laughed up at him like a delighted child.
"I've been amused," he whispered back, "to hear people saying it's the most beautiful ball that's ever been given in the State."
"Well, of course, I meant it to be"; and she was whirled away.
It was about two o'clock in the morning that Ethan made his way out of the pavilion, with a feeling of unsupportable weariness. He must get away from all those noisy, irrelevant people; above all, he must get away from the sight of Val's unthinking joy. He walked on to the far corner of the osage-orange thicket, and stood there in the deepest part of the shadow. Down below the terraces the music clanged and jarred. The round Japanese lanterns, festooned from tree to tree, were like strings of giant gems, yellow topaz, rose and scarlet coral, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and opal. The late Indian summer night was not cold; every one had been saying, "What wonderful weather!" but to Ethan there was more than a hint of winter in the pungent air. There was that obscure menace, that sense of melancholy lying behind all, and round all, like the sea. Autumn had brought this message to him since his childhood. It was the time when Nature seemed to pause a while in her ceaseless masque of the seasons to whisper her one honest word into the ear of man. "Be warned!" she seemed to say; "be warned!"