With a jerk he stopped dancing and loosened his hold of her.
She stood and blinked at lights and people: she had been far away, in a world of melody and motion, and could not come back to herself all at once. Wonderingly she looked at Maurice; for the music was going on, and no one else had left off dancing; and, with the same of comprehension, but still too dazed to resist, she followed him up the stairs.
"It's easy to see you don't care for dancing," she said, when they were back in the corner of the gallery. Her breath came unsteadily, and again she touched her face with the small, scented handkerchief.
"No. Not dancing like that," he answered rudely. But now again, as so often before, directly it was put into words, his feeling seemed strained and puritanic.
Louise leaned forward in her seat to look into his face.
"Like what?—what do you mean? Oh, you foolish boy, what is the matter with you to-night? You will tell me next I can't dance."
"You dance only too well."
"But you would rather I was a wooden doll—is that it How is one to please you? First you are vexed with me because YOU did not ask ME to dance; and when I send my partner away, on your account, you won't finish one dance with me but exact that I shall sit here, in a dark corner, and let that glorious music go by. I don't know what to make of you." But her attention had already wandered to the dancers below. "Look at them!—Oh, it makes me envious! No one else has dreamt of stopping yet. For no matter how tired you are beforehand, when you dance you don't feel it, and as long as the music goes on, you must go on, too, though it lasted all night.—Oh, how often I have longed for a night like this! And then I've never met a better dancer than Mr. Herries."
"And for the sake of his dancing, you can forget what a puppy he is?"
"Puppy?" At the warmth of his interruption, she laughed, the low, indolent laugh, by means of which she seemed determined, on this night, to keep anything from touching her too nearly. "How crude you men are! Because he is handsome and dances well, you reason that he must necessarily be a simpleton."