“George, I ask you to observe that women are odd: if you restrain yourself, they resent it: and if you don’t restrain yourself, you bore them. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
“Treat ’em rough, old man. And so to bed,” yawned George Tarlyon, handsome Tarlyon. Much will come of that young man, it was said. And much indeed was to come of that young man, in the fullness of war and peace. He will meet Ivor Marlay; and he will laugh at him. And George Tarlyon had an eighteenth century kind of laugh: the casual, fearless, handsome Lord Tarlyon....
CHAPTER II
1
It was about three o’clock now; the ballroom looked a vast place in which three couples were entirely surrounded by parquet floor; and the band was become ecstatic with weariness and repetition. They sang and yelled and rolled their eyes, they crooned and cooned and beat their drums.
“Josh—ua! Josh—ua!
Why don’t you call and see mamma?
Josh—ua! Josh—ua!
Nicer than lemon-squash you are!
Yes, by gosh you are!
Josh—u—a—a....”
Ivor and Magdalen Gray danced silently. For several minutes he was not conscious of her, but only of the pleasure of dancing with her. She was scarcely there at all, she moved so easily with him. She was so wonderfully there that she was scarcely there at all—which may sound silly, but is nevertheless a first principle to be learnt by all women who would be good dancers.
“I am liking this very much,” he said at last.
“I too!” the light voice said; but so seriously that it surprised him into looking for the first time at the face beside his shoulder; and he saw that, if indeed she was liking it, it must be in a very subtle way, for she looked sad and tired.
“Maybe you’d rather we didn’t dance?” he asked tentatively.