For one delirious instant it seemed to me that if I stepped on the shining floor, I should go down as on a frozen pool. Then her look summoned me, and as I drew nearer she held out her hand and stood waiting. There was a white rose in her wreath of plaits, and when I bent to speak to her the fragrance floated about me.
"Do you still remember me because of the blue-eyed collie?" I asked, for it was all I could think of.
Her firm square chin was tilted a little upward, and as she smiled at me, her thick black eyebrows were raised in the old childish expression of charming archness. It was the face of an idea rather than the face of a woman, and the power, the humour, the radiant energy in her look, appeared to divide her, as by an immeasurable distance, from the pretty girls of her own age among whom she stood. She seemed at once older and younger than her companions—older by some deeper and sadder knowledge of life, younger because of the peculiar buoyancy with which she moved and spoke. As I looked at her mouth, very full, of an almost violent red, and tremulous with expression, I remembered Miss Hatty's "delicate bow" with an odd feeling of anger.
"It has been a long time, but I haven't forgotten you, Ben Starr," she said.
"Do you remember the night of the storm and the cup of milk you wouldn't drink?"
"How horrid I was! And the geranium you gave me?"
"And the churchyard and the red shoes and Samuel?"
"Poor Samuel. I can't have any dogs now. Aunt Mitty doesn't like them—"
Some one came up to speak to her, and while I bowed awkwardly and turned away, I saw her gaze looking back at me from the roses and the pink-shaded lamps. A touch on my arm brought the face of young George between me and my ecstatic visions.
"I say, Ben, there's an awfully pretty girl over there I want you to waltz with—Bessy Dandridge."