"Everybody seems to think we soon shall be. Didn't I hear Jack Waring talking to you about trying to get a commission?"
"Well, he wants to be prepared, of course. It's a military family, you see."
They walked upstairs together and stood in the doorway of the ball-room. Colonel Farwell's car had come and gone very unobtrusively; no one seemed to miss the absentees, and Loring and Mayhew, O'Rane and Arden were holding the party together with tireless energy and zest. At three o'clock Lady Knightrider and those who had long distances to cover reluctantly sent for their cars, but the house-party and its near neighbours danced indefatigably. At sunrise the curtains were flung aside and the lights turned out; the last of many suppers was eaten on the terrace at half-past four, and at five O'Rane organized a slow march-past of the remaining cars in honour of Loring and Violet who stood on the top of the steps, bowing with weary joyousness their acknowledgement of the last toast.
Barbara had been compelled at first to do her share of dancing, but, when the band escaped to catch an early train back to London, she took possession of the piano. It was again horribly like that first night at Croxton, when Jack sat in some embarrassment by her side on the dais; but at least she was not expected to talk or to pretend that she was enjoying herself. When Arden joined her, she resigned the piano to him and slipped upstairs to her room. She was down again a moment later, trying to decide whether it was more intolerable to be with others or alone. Her room was too tranquil and cool; she had been so happy, as she dressed, so determined to enjoy herself;—and she had nothing on her mind. Through the open window she heard Arden's hand and voice at the piano, punctuated by burst of cheering from the strip of drive under the terrace. The engines of the cars thrashed and beat, then grew calm and jerked into sound again as one after another shot forward; Loring and Violet were hoarse but inexhaustibly happy, and, as Barbara ran downstairs, she told herself that she too wanted to congratulate them again; in their present state they were too rare to be wasted.
"What's the next item, Jim?" panted O'Rane, as she came on to the terrace. His hair was disordered, his shirt and collar crumpled and his arms full of the champagne glasses which the departing guests had tossed to him after the final toast. But he was ready to go through the night's revelry from the beginning. "I'll race you to the river and back!"
"My little man, I assure you that you will do no such thing," Loring answered. "If any one wants to dance any more, you can play to them; if any one wants anything more to eat and drink, you can supply their wants. I think it's high time we were all in bed. You're certainly going indoors before you catch cold," he said to Violet. "And you, Sally. And you, Babs."
He rounded them up until Barbara alone remained behind with the chill wind of early morning beating on her bare shoulders and chest and blowing unchecked through her gossamer clothes. After the earlier insufferable heat, this cold air with its burden of dew and night-scented stock wrapped itself round her body like a bandage laid on burning flesh. It purified, too, like a mountain torrent of melting snow pouring over her arms and breast. Some girl in a book—it was by Gissing, but she could not remember names to-night—had bathed naked in the sea by moonlight—to cleanse her spirit because she had suffered men to touch her body; this wind, as yet unwarmed by the orange sun of dawn, served her in place of the kindly sea....
"If you want triple pneumonia, Babs, that's the way to get it," said Loring.
His voice suggested a new train of thought, and she pursued it without answering. Some young wife in a book—it was by Balzac, but she could not remember names to-night—broke her heart because she fancied that her husband had ceased to love her; no longer caring for life, she worked herself into a violent sweat and stood in the dew by the brink of a pond until she had given herself consumption.... But to take refuge in suicide was to shew that you were unfit to have been born, that you were unequal to life; this, even this night of horror, was a thing to be mastered; Barbara luxuriated in life as a thing to be dominated and enchained like a destroying flood or fire....