A turn of the waltz brought them near Mrs. Bowen; her mask seemed to wear a dumb reproach.
He began to be weary; one of the differences between youth and later life is that the latter wearies so soon of any given emotion.
"Ah, I can't remember, either! Aren't you getting rather tired of the waltz and me?"
"Oh no; go on!" she deeply murmured. "Try to remember."
The long, pulsating stream of the music broke and fell. The dancers crookedly dispersed in wandering lines. She took his arm; he felt her heart leap against it; those innocent, trustful throbs upbraided him. At the same time his own heart beat with a sort of fond, protecting tenderness; he felt the witchery of his power to make this young, radiant, and beautiful creature hang flattered and bewildered on his talk; he liked the compassionate worship with which his tacit confidence had inspired her, even while he was not without some satirical sense of the crude sort of heart-broken hero he must be in the fancy of a girl of her age.
"Let us go and walk in the corridor a moment," he said. But they walked there till the alluring melancholy music of the waltz began again. In a mutual caprice, they rejoined the dance.
It came into his head to ask, "Who is he?" and as he had got past denying himself anything, he asked it.
"He? What he?"
"He that Mrs. Bowen thought might object to your seeing the Carnival?"
"Oh!—oh yes! That was the not impossible he."