“Can I ever thank God enough for that night’s folly!” she said, with such sudden emotion that his smile altered as he looked into her dark eyes.
“Yet that dance by moonlight exiled you,” he said.
“Do you realise what it saved me from, too? And what it has given me?”
He wondered whether she included Westmore in the gift. The music ceased at that moment, and, though the other orchestra began, they strolled along the flowering balustrade of the terrace together until they encountered Dulcie and Westmore.
“Have you spoken to your hostess?” inquired Westmore. “She’s over yonder on a dais, enthroned like Germania or a Metropolitan Opera Valkyrie. Dulcie and I have paid our homage.”
So Barres and Thessalie went away to comply with the required formality; and, when they returned from the rite, they found Esmé Trenor and Corot Mandel cornering Dulcie under a flowering orange tree while Westmore, beside her, chatted with a most engaging woman who proved, later, to be a practising physician.
Esmé was saying languidly, that anybody could fly into a temper and kick his neighbours, but that indifference 376 to physical violence was a condition of mind attained only by the spiritual intellect of the psychic adept.
“Passivism,” he added with a wave of his lank fingers, “is the first plane to be attained on the journey toward Nirvana. Therefore, I am a pacifist and this silly war does not interest me in the slightest.”
The very engaging woman, who had been chatting with Westmore, looked around at Esmé Trenor, evidently much amused.
“I imagined that you were a pacifist,” she said. “I fancy, Mr. Mandel, also, is one.”