"Very well."
What happened then was remote from her. Sophie did not remember what she had said or done, until she was dancing with Arthur Henty.
How long was it since that night at Warria? Was she waiting for him as she had waited then? But there were all those long years between. Memories brilliant and tempestuous flickered before her. Then she was dancing with Arthur.
He had come to her quite ordinarily; they had walked down the room a few paces; then he had taken her hand in his, and they had swung out among the dancers. He did not seem drunk now. Sophie wondered at his steadier poise as she moved away with him. The butterfly joy of fluttering in sunshine was leaving her, she knew, as she went with him. She made an effort to recapture it. Looking up at him, she tried to talk lightly, indifferently, and to laugh, but it was no good. Arthur did not bother to reply to anything she said; he rested his eyes in hers, possessing himself of her behind her gaze. Sophie's laughter failed. The inalienable, unalterable attraction of each to the other which they had read long before in each other's eyes was still there, after all the years and the dark and troubled times they had been through.
Sophie wondered whether Arthur was thinking of those times when they had walked together on the Ridge tracks. She wondered whether he was remembering little things he had said ... she had said ... the afternoon he had recited:
"I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a fairy's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild."
Sophie wished she had not begun to think back. She wished she had not danced with Arthur. People looking after her wondered why she was not laughing; why suddenly her good spirits had died down. She was tired and wanted to cry.... She hoped she would not cry; but she did not like dancing with Arthur Henty before all these people. It was like dancing on a grave.
Henty's grip tightened. Sophie's face had become childish and pitiful, working with the distress which she could not suppress. His hand on hers comforted her. Their hands loved and clung; they comforted each other, every fibre finding its mate, twined and entwined; all the little nests of nerves were throbbing and crooning to each other.
Were they dancing, or drifting through space as they would drift when they were dead, as perhaps they had drifted through time? Sophie wondered. The noises of the ball-room broke in on her wondering—voices, shouting, and laughter; the little cries of girls and the heavy exclamations of men, the music enwrapping them....
Sophie longed for the deep, straight glance of his eyes; yet she dared not look up. Arthur's will, working against hers, demanded the surrender. Through all her body, imperiously, his demand communicated itself. Her gaze went to him, and flew off again.