“I understand,” said Sylvia, smiling. “I have tried my best to be amazing.”
“It is evident that you dislike me intensely,” he went on. “I ask you to tell me why. What have I done?”
“It isn’t so much what you have done—it is what you are.”
“And what am I, Miss Castleman?”
“I don’t know just how to put it into words. You are some sort of monstrosity; something that when I see it, fills me with a blind rage, so that I want to fly at its throat. And then I realize that even in attacking it I am putting myself upon a level with it—and so I want to turn and flee for my life—or rather for my self-respect. I want to flee from it, Mr. van Tuiver, and never see it, never hear its voice, never even know of its existence! Do you see?”
“I see,” said the man, in a voice so faint as to be hardly audible; and then suddenly came the sound of the bell, and Sylvia sprang up.
“I flee!” she said.
§ 13
There came a new dance, the sixth, and a new partner, who was short, and was speedily discovered to be Jackson. Then came the seventh dance, and Sylvia expected that it would be her Faun again, but was disappointed. It was a man unknown, and she wondered if Bates had lost his nerve. But with Number Eight came the inevitable return.
Van Tuiver was so anxious this time that he asked before he began to dance, “Is that you?” And when Sylvia answered “Yes,” she could hear his sigh of relief. All through the dance she could feel his excitement. Once or twice he tried to talk, but she whispered to him to keep the rules.