“What is it, Mr. Smith?” she said again, following him. “You are not well. You are in pain.”
He stood a moment or two gazing at her with staring eyes and parted lips, pain, grief and even rage distorting his pale face.
“It is wicked,” at length he panted. “It is just terrible wicked—a young girl like that.”
“Wicked? Who? What?”
“That—that girl—dancing like that.”
“Dancing? That kind of dancing?” cried Mandy, astonished. “I was brought up a Methodist myself,” she continued, “but that kind of dancing—why, I love it.”
“It is of the devil. I am a Methodist—a preacher—but I could not preach, so I quit. But that is of the world, the flesh, and the devil and—and I have not the courage to denounce it. She is—God help me—so—so wonderful—so wonderful.”
“But, Mr. Smith,” said Mandy, laying her hand upon his arm, and seeking to sooth his passion, “surely this dancing is—”
Loud cheers and clapping of hands from the house interrupted her. The man put his hands over his eyes as if to shut out a horrid vision, shuddered violently, and with a weird sound broke from her touch and fled into the bluff behind the house just as the party came streaming from the house preparatory to departing. It seemed to Mandy as if she had caught a glimpse of the inner chambers of a soul and had seen things too sacred to be uttered.
Among the last to leave were young Dent and the Inspector.