"And you?" she asked.
"Oh, I'm like the Tenth. I don't dance."
Aliette dimpled to laughter at the old jest. It mattered so little what he said to her with his lips. His eyes gave her the answer to the one question; the only question she had ever asked herself in vain. His eyes said: "Yes. This is Love. This is the Real Thing." She wondered if his brain knew the message of his eyes. She marveled at herself for not having sooner known the message of her heart. "I'm in love with him," she thought. "I've been in love with him ever since that Sunday at Key Hatch." All the gray unease of the past months, of the past years, diffused to amber sunshine.
The Spanish secretary, sitting on her right, chimed in to their conversation. "You do not dance, Cavendish. That is strange. I thought all English people danced."
The rose-bubble of enchantment was broken. Talk grew general. Dinner drew to its end.
6
"You look a little tired, Mrs. Cavendish. Can't I get you some more coffee? A cigarette, perhaps?"
"Thank you so much. I think I would like a cigarette."
Aliette and Julia sat together in a palm-screened corner of the vast Louis Quinze drawing-room. The men were still downstairs. The younger woman rose; and fetched a silver cigarette-box, matches.
Julia lit her cigarette. She felt very old, very weary, quite unlike herself. The pain nagged at her back.