"Yet you like dancing; so come and shake off your boredom with me," said Edgar with a sudden flush. "They are just beginning to waltz: let me have one turn with you."
"No. Why do you ask me? You do not like to dance with me," said Leam proudly.
"No? Who told you such nonsense—such a falsehood as that?" hotly.
"Yourself," she answered.
Alick shifted his place uneasily. Something in Leam's manner to Edgar struck him with an acute sense of distress, and seemed to tell him all that he had hitherto failed to understand. But he felt indignant with Edgar, even though his neglect, at which Leam had been so evidently pained, might to another man have given hopes. He would rather have known her loving, beloved, hence blessed, than wounded by this man's coldness, by his indifference to what was to him, poor faithful and idealizing Alick, such surpassing and supreme delightfulness.
"I?" cried Edgar, willfully misunderstanding her. "When did I tell you I did not like to dance With you?"
"This evening," said Leam, not looking into his face.
"Oh, there is some mistake here. Come with me now. I will soon convince you that I do not dislike to dance with you," cried Edgar, excited, peremptory, eager.
Her accusation had touched him. It made him resolute to show her that he did not dislike to dance with her—she, the most beautiful girl in the room, the best dancer—she, Leam, that name which meant a love-poem in itself to him.
"Come," he said again, offering his hand, not his arm.