A barbell struck on the floor. A feminine voice gave the sharp word of command, and the Young Ladies formed up for their performance on the parallel bars.
Miss Usher still sat averted.
"Look," he said, at last, "it's Winny's turn."
She turned slowly, reluctantly almost, and looked.
Winny Dymond, shy, but grave and earnest, was going through her little preliminary byplay at the bars. Then, with her startling suddenness, she rushed at them, and swung herself, it seemed to Ransome, with an increased abandonment, a wilder rhythm and motion; and when she raised her body like an arch, far-stretching and wide-planted, it seemed to him that it rose higher and stretched farther and wider than before, that there was, in fact, something preposterous in her attitude. For as Miss Usher looked at Winny she drew herself up and her red mouth stiffened.
Ranny's tension relaxed when Winny flung herself from side to side again and over, and lighted on her feet in the little curtseying posture, perfunctory and pathetic.
He clapped his hands. "'Jove! That's good!" He was smiling tenderly.
He turned to Miss Usher, eager and delighted. "Well—what'd you think of it?"
The eyes he gazed into were remote and cold. Miss Usher did not answer him. And he gathered from her silence that she disapproved profoundly of the performance. He wondered why.
"Oh, come," he said. "She's the best we've got. There's not one of those girls that can touch her on the bars. Look at them."