“Oh! Ah!” said Lady Clifton-Wyatt. It was a very short “Oh!” and a very long “Ah!” a sort of gliding, crushing “Ah!” It went over him like a tank, leaving him flat.
Lady Clifton-Wyatt reached Sir Hector’s arm in a few strides and unhooked him from the girl––also the girl from him. The girl was grateful. Sir Hector was used to disappointments.
Davidge went to Marie Louise, who stood lonely and distraught. He felt ashamed of his word “sorry” and hoped she hadn’t heard it. Silently and crudely he angled his arm, and she took it and went along with him in a somnambulism.
Davidge, manlike, tried to cheer up his elbow-mate by a compliment. A man’s first aid to a woman in distress is a compliment or a few pats of the hand. He said:
“This is the second big dinner you and I have attended. There were bushels of flowers between us before, but I’d rather see your face than a ton of roses.”
The compliment fell out like a ton of coal. He did not like it at all. She seemed not to have heard him, for she murmured:
“Yis, isn’t it?”
Then, as the occultists say, he went into the silence. There is nothing busier than a silence at a dinner. The effort to think with no outlet in speech kept up such a roaring in his head that he could hardly grasp what the rest were saying.
Lady Clifton-Wyatt sat at Davidge’s right and kept invading his quiet communion with Marie Louise by making remarks of the utmost graciousness somehow fermented––like wine turned vinegar.