Julian had said she was “true as steel.” Therefore, I felt no diffidence in manoeuvring myself into her society on every conceivable occasion. Sometimes she spoke to me of Julian, whom I admitted I knew, and, with feminine courage, she hid her hopeless, all-devouring affection for her cousin under the cloak of ingenuous levity. She laughed nearly every time his name was mentioned.
About this time the Gunton-Cresswells gave a dance.
I looked forward to it with almost painful pleasure. I had not been to a dance since my last May-week at Cambridge. Also No. 5, Kensington Lane had completely usurped the position I had previously assigned to Paradise. To waltz with Julian’s cousin—that was the ambition which now dwarfed my former hankering for the fame of authorship or a habitation in Bohemia.
Mrs. Goodwin once said that happiness consists in anticipating an impossible future. Be that as it may, I certainly thought my sensations were pleasant enough when at length my hansom pulled up jerkily beside the red-carpeted steps of No. 5, Kensington Lane. As I paid the fare, I could hear the murmur from within of a waltz tune—and I kept repeating to myself that Eva had promised me the privilege of taking her in to supper, and had given me the last two waltzes and the first two extras.
I went to pay my devoirs to my hostess. She was supinely gamesome. “Ah,” she said, showing her excellent teeth, “Genius attendant at the revels of Terpsichore.”
“Where Beauty, Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell,” I responded, cutting it, as though mutton, thick, “teaches e’en the humblest visitor the reigning Muse’s art.”
“You may have this one, if you like,” said Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell simply.
Supper came at last, and, with supper, Eva.
I must now write it down that she was not a type of English beauty. She was not, I mean, queenly, impassive, never-anything-but-her-cool-calm-self. Tonight, for instance, her eyes were as I had never seen them. There danced in them the merriest glitter, which was more than a mere glorification of the ordinary merry glitter—which scores of girls possess at every ball. To begin with, there was a diabolical abandon in Eva’s glitter, which raised it instantly above the common herd’s. And behind it all was that very misty mist. I don’t know whether all men have seen that mist; but I am sure that no man has seen it more than once; and, from what I’ve seen of the average man, I doubt if most of them have ever seen it at all. Well, there it was for me to see in Eva Eversleigh’s eyes that night at supper. It made me think of things unspeakable. I felt a rush of classic aestheticism: Arcadia, Helen of Troy, the happy valleys of the early Greeks. Supper: I believe I gave her oyster pâtés. But I was far away. Deep, deep, deep in Eva’s eyes I saw a craft sighting, ’neath a cloudless azure sky, the dark blue Symplegades; heard in my ears the jargon, loud and near me, of the sailors; and faintly o’er the distance of the dead-calm sea rose intermittently the sound of brine-foam at the clashing rocks....
As we sat there tête-à-tête, she smiled across the table at me with such perfect friendliness, it seemed as though a magic barrier separated our two selves from all the chattering, rustling crowd around us. When she spoke, a little quiver of feeling blended adorably with the low, sweet tones of her voice. We talked, indeed, of trifles, but with just that charming hint of intimacy which men friends have who may have known one another from birth, and may know one another for a lifetime, but never become bores, never change. Only when it comes between a woman and a man, it is incomparably finer. It is the talk, of course, of lovers who have not realised they are in love.