Stephen Darville stood in the shadows of a great clump of rhododendrons at the terrace edge watching the swirl of color on the lawn, his eyes searching the laughing crowd for a sight of Jean. His eyes found her and followed her across the lawn. When she came near he called her name.
She hurried to him and took his hands in a friendly tug.
"One dance together, Steve, before you go out to the workshop."
He shook his head.
"Just one," she pleaded.
He pressed her hands, watching the way the stiff sea breeze ruffled the gay silk kerchief at her throat.
"There's no time. Your father's waiting for me now."
"Confound father, confound you and confound science."
She laughed, but there had been a note of real annoyance in her voice.
Darville looked at the soft curve of her throat and the high-lighted sheen of her close-cropped brown hair and beyond the moving figures on the lawn. He suddenly wanted it all; the music and the laughter and the gaiety and the feel of her in his arms. But he wanted the other, too; the thing that awaited him out there in John Ploving's workshop. The feel of metal cold in his hands, metal that his own hands had helped to shape, and the crazy swaying of the thin needles on the control board before him. The age-old call of the twin, conflicting fires in the blood of youth—Duty and Romance.