Feeling! If Lois had known of that corpse-like feeling of death in the heart that Dosia strove to cover decently! What did those men think of her, or those women who saw? What could they think her like, to have given any man a right to act that way toward her? Yet, what had Lawson done? Nothing. He had put his hand on her shoulder—he had asked her for a kiss. That was all. It was nothing and it was everything—something that could never be undone. Through the dancing, through the flirting, through all the laughing and the talking the words repeated themselves. What had happened? It was nothing—and it was everything. Each effort for comfort brought with it that horrible, blinding shame to surge over her more and more, as each time also she recalled the scene, the touch.
How dazzlingly bright the room was, how brilliantly showed the people, how gay the scene! One partner after another claimed Dosia. She danced and danced, and did not know she danced. This was her ball! And in all that throng there was not one person whom she could call her friend. She fancied that people were whispering as she passed them. She had but one prayer—that the evening might end. She met Justin’s eyes from time to time; they looked stern and disapproving. Even Leverich had an altered expression. She knew both he and Justin blamed her, and she was right. Those who are responsible are squeamish as to the appearance of delicacy in the conduct of a young girl. Lawson was in the greater condemnation, yet there was more of personal irritation felt with her, in that such a thing had been possible; it lowered her, and it placed them all in an awkward position. Justin had said to Leverich briefly, “She had better come back to us at once,” and Leverich had answered, “Well, perhaps it would be best.”
William Snow stayed outside in the hall, not coming into the ball-room at all. He stood, instead, leaning against a doorway, and watched everyone who approached Dosia; his brows were lowering, his attitude aggressive. He saw that George Sutton hovered around Dosia when she was not dancing, his round moon-face, suffused with pleasure, bent solicitously toward her. Once she sent him for a glass of water, and William saw that she had lapsed momentarily on a corner divan by his sister Bertha. He noticed the wistful eyes raised to the elder woman, but he did not hear the younger say with a suddenly tremulous voice:
“Oh, Miss Bertha, I’m so glad to be here with you!”
“Thank you, my dear.”
“I’m homesick,” said Dosia, with a white smile. “Oh, Miss Bertha, I’m so homesick!” Her fancy had leaped passionately to the security of the untidy cottage in the South, with its irresponsive inmates, as if it were really the loving home she longed for.
“Homesick at a ball!” said Miss Bertha, with a kind inflection. She patted the folds of the dress near her comfortingly with her thin ungloved hand. “You oughtn’t to be homesick now, you must enjoy yourself, my dear; you’re young.”
Something in her tone nearly brought the tears to Dosia’s burning eyes. If she could only have stayed with Miss Bertha! But she was claimed for the dance. Why must you dance when you were dead? Would the ball never end?
The evening was half over when she found herself in front of Mr. Girard, with some one hastily introducing them. He had just come from up-stairs with several men, all laughing and talking together interestedly, but he hardly had been in the room at all, and she had sensitively fancied that he had kept out of her way on purpose, though she remembered hearing Leverich say that he did not know how to dance, and so did not care for balls. Now, as she had looked at him coming through the crowd, his personality made itself felt, through her dull misery, as something unaffectedly charming and magnetic. He was tall, straight, and well made, with the square shoulders she remembered, and the easy, erect carriage of a soldier. The thick waves of his light-brown hair, his long, thin face with its large, well-shaped nose and resolute chin, all gave an impression of young vitality and power that accorded well with her thought of him. His eyes were light gray, and not very large; Dosia had seen them full of laughter a moment before, but they seemed to acquire a sudden baffling hardness now as they met hers. She had thought of him so long and intimately that his presence near her brought its exquisite suggestion of help and comfort. She looked up at him. It might help even her to be near anyone as strong as that, if he were kind—as kind as she knew he could be. Her heart was in her eyes, as ever, unconsciously, as she half extended her hand.
Was it by accident that he did not see it? He bowed formally as he said: “Pardon me, but I am just on my way to the train.”