He stopped suddenly.
"What?" she said.
But once more she had the feeling that she had only just swum into the field of his vision. It was singularly disconcerting. His smile, which had disappeared, appeared again. He seemed to remember that he was at a dance.
"I suppose you're coming back after Christmas?" he said.
It was not very likely, but she said: "Very likely. You were saying, about the men who aren't duffers——"
Again he got her focus. "Was I? Well, there aren't so many of them that we need bother about them. So you are coming back?"
Louie found him extraordinary, unclassifiable. She could not say that his answers were not ready; they were instant to the point; but somehow they weren't answers. Of course, they were answers if you liked, but they seemed in some way to be private communings as well. She wondered whether he was in the habit of talking much to himself; he spoke rather as if he was—as if, his consciousness of her presence notwithstanding, he considered himself to be as good as alone now.
Louie had heard the expression "second self"—well, this, "second self" or not, was certainly a curious accord. And then he allowed that deliberate, altogether discordant smile (that might just as well have been hooked round his ears like a false beard) to come between, and asked her if she was coming back after Christmas!
Then—this came suddenly—she knew for a certainty what hitherto had hung in doubt—that she would not be coming back after Christmas. She must sit down. Of course, it was to have been expected. She had been unwise to dance.