"But you are so little: do you always dance?"
"I am always to dance now; I did not until this season."
Her voice was dreamy and cold, the flush had already faded; she seemed not speaking with the slightest consciousness.
"Do go, Master Auchester!" and Clara looked at me from her azure eyes as kindly as if she smiled. "Do go, or she will have no tea, and will be very tired. I am so much obliged to you for the sweet yellow honey; I shall keep it in my closet, in that pretty blue jar."
I would have the blue jar, though Lydia wanted me to take a white one.
"Oh, pray eat the honey, and give me the jar to fill again! I won't stay, don't be afraid, but good-night. Won't you let me shake hands with you, Miss Lemark?" for she still stood apart, like a reed in a sultry day. She looked at me directly. "Good-night, dear!" I was so inexpressibly touched by the tone, or the manner, or the mysterious something—that haunted her dancing—in her, that I added, "Shall I bring you some flowers next class-night?"
"Oh, do go, Master Auchester! I prayed you ten minutes ago."
"I am gone." And so I was; and this time I was not too late for my own tea at home.
There must be something startlingly perfect in that which returns upon the soul with a more absolute impression after its abstraction of our faculties has passed away. So completely had the fascination of those steps sufficed that I forgot the voice of Miss Benette, resounding all the time, and only associated in my recollection the silver monotone of the clinking bells with the lulling undulation, the quivering feet. All night long, when I dreamed, it was so; and when I awoke in the morning (as usual), I thought the evening before, a dream.