“But we were laughing our silly heads off every minute! I had no opportunity.”
That seemed to amuse her and awaken the ever-latent humour in her.
“Opportunity,” she observed demurely, “should be created and taken, not shyly awaited with eyes rolled upward and a sucked thumb.”
They both laughed outright. Her colour rose; the old humorous challenge was in her eyes again; the subtle mask was already slipping from her features, revealing them in all their charming recklessness.
“You know my creed,” she said; “to go forward—laugh—and accept what Destiny sends you—still laughing!” Her smile altered again, became, for a moment, strange and vague. “God knows that is what I am doing to-night,” she murmured, lifting her slim glass, in which the gush of sunny bubbles caught the candlelight. “To Destiny—whatever it may be! Drink with me, Garry!”
Around them the chatter and vivacity increased, as Damaris ended a duel of wit with Westmore and prepared for battle with Corot Mandel. Everybody seemed to be irresponsibly loquacious except Dulcie, who sat between Barres and Esmé Trenor, a silent, smiling, reserved little listener. For Barres was still conversationally involved with Thessalie, and Esmé Trenor, languid and detached, being entirely ignored by Damaris, whom he had taken out, awaited his own proper modicum of worship from his silent little neighbour on his left—which tribute he took for granted 136 was his sacred due, and which, hitherto, he had invariably received from woman.
But nobody seemed to be inclined to worship; Damaris scarcely deigned to notice him, his impudence, perhaps, still rankling. Thessalie, laughingly engaged with Barres, remained oblivious to the fashionable portrait painter. As for Elsena Helmund, that youthful matron was busily pretending to comprehend Corot Mandel’s covert orientalisms, and secretly wondering whether they were, perhaps, as improper as Westmore kept whispering to her they were, urging her to pick up her skirts and run.
Esmé Trenor permitted a few weary but slightly disturbed glances to rest on Dulcie from time to time, but made no effort to entertain her.
And she, on her part, evinced no symptoms of worshipping him. And all the while he was thinking to himself:
“Can this be the janitor’s daughter? Is she the same rather soiled, impersonal child whom I scarcely ever noticed—the thin, immature, negligible little drudge with a head full of bobbed red hair?”