Elma, trembling all over, but bursting with joy that she could speak of it at last without restraint to somebody, answered, in a very low and tremulous voice, “Yes, Miss Ewes, I resisted it.”
Miss Ewes leant back in her place, and gazed at her long, with a very affectionate and motherly air. “Then I’m sure I don’t know,” she said at last, breaking out in a voice full of confidence, “why on earth you shouldn’t marry this young man you’re in love with!”
Elma’s heart beat still harder and higher than ever.
“What young man?” she murmured low—just to test the enchantress.
And Miss Ewes made answer, without one moment’s hesitation, “Why, of course, Cyril Waring!”
For a minute or two then, there was a dead silence. After that, Miss Ewes looked up and spoke again. “Have you felt it often?” she asked, without one word of explanation.
“Twice before,” Elma answered, not pretending to misunderstand. “Once I gave way. That was the very first time, you see, and I didn’t know yet exactly what it meant. The second time I knew, and then I resisted it.”
Somehow, before Miss Ewes, she hardly ever felt shy. She was so conscious Miss Ewes knew all about it without her telling her.
The elder woman looked at her with unfeigned admiration.
“That was brave of you,” she said quietly. “I couldn’t have done it myself! I should have HAD to give way to it. Then in YOU it’s dying out. That’s as clear as daylight. It won’t go any farther. I knew it wouldn’t, of course, when I saw you resisted even the Naga dance. And for you, that’s excellent.... For myself I encourage it. It’s that that makes my music what it is. It’s that that inspires me. I composed that Naga dance I just played over to you, Elma. But not all out of my own head. I couldn’t have invented it. It comes down in our blood, my dear, to you and me alike. We both inherit it from a common ancestress.”