Her eyes now sought the dancing floor more insistently. She had just become aware of Jasper's tall figure moving aimlessly amidst the crowd. Dear, kind Jasper! He was looking for her, of course. Always not physically and actually, then with his thoughts, trying to find her, to understand her, to guess at an unspoken wish.
"Dear, kind Jasper," Rosemary sighed and closed her eyes, in order to shut out that sudden glimpse she had just had of Jasper's anxious gaze scanning the crowd-in search of her. She pulled the curtain an inch or two farther forward, pushed back her chair deeper into the shadow.
Peter returned, carrying a bottle of champagne and a tumbler.
"Will this do?" he asked, and busied himself with the cork.
"Delicious," she replied, " but what about you?"
"Me?"
"Yes; you have only brought one glass."
"The only one I could get. There's a regular fight up there for crockery."
She laughed. "It must be horrible up there." She exclaimed.
"Dante's Inferno," he assented laconically.
He filled the glass till the froth bubbled over and then gave it to her to drink, which she did with delight.
"Lovely," she exclaimed.
He watched her as she screwed up her eyes and those tantalizing little lines appeared at the sides of her nose.
"I hear you did splendidly at Lord's this afternoon, Peter," she said. There's a wonderful article about you in the Evening Post."
Then she held the glass out to be refilled. "Your turn next," she said.
"Won't you have some more?"
"Not just now, thank you."
He put the bottle down on the floor, then put out his hand to take the glass from her. As he did so his fingers closed over hers. She tried to withdraw her hand, and it the brief struggle the glass fell between them and was smashed to smithereens.
"Our one and only glass," Rosemary exclaimed. "Please, Peter," she went on with a nervous little laugh, "will you release my hand?"
"No," he replied, and increased the pressure on her struggling fingers. "I have often been allowed to hold your hand before. Why not now?"
She shrugged her shoulders and ceased to struggle.
"Am I never to be allowed to hold your hand again?" he insisted.
But her head now was turned away; she was apparently deeply interested in the crowd below.
"Oh, Peter," she exclaimed lightly, "do look at Mrs. Opert in that girlish 1840 costume. Did you ever see anything more ludicrous? Do look at her huge feet in those wee sandals. There's Jimmy Ransome talking to her now-"
Again she tried to withdraw her hand and still he held her fast. She turned to him with a frown.
"Peter," she said, "if you are going to be foolish, I'll go."
"What do you call being foolish?" he retorted. "Holding your hand? I held you in my arms just now while we danced."
"I call it being foolish, Peter," she retorted coolly. "Would you rather I called it disloyal?"
"You are too clever to do that, Rosemary," he rejoined, "disloyalty being so essentially a feminine attribute."
"Peter!"
"Oh, I know! I know!" he went on, quite slowly, and then suddenly released her hand. "Presently you will be Jasper's wife, the wife of my best friend. And if I happen to hold your hand just one instant longer than convention permits I shall be called disloyal, a cad-any ugly word that takes your fancy or the moment. So I must become less than a friend-less than a distant cousin-I must not hold your hand-the others may-I may not. They may come near you, look into your eyes-see you smile-my God! Rosemary, am I never to look into those glorious eyes of yours again?"
For a moment it seemed as if she was going to give him a direct answer, a soft flush rose to her cheeks, and there was a quick intake of her breath as if words would tumble out that she was determined to suppress. The struggle only lasted for a second. The next she had thrown back her head and burst into a peal of laughter.
"Why, Peter," she exclaimed, and turned great, serious eyes upon him, "I never knew before that you read Browning."
Her laugh had half sobered him. But evidently he had not grasped her meaning, for he frowned and murmured puzzled: "Browning?"
"Why, yes," she said gaily. "I forgot exactly how it goes, but it is something like this: 'I will hold your hand, just as long as all may, Or so very little longer.'"
He made no sign that her flippancy had hurt him; he sat down beside her, his hands clasped between his knees.
"Why should you hate me so, Rosemary?" he asked quietly.
"Hate you, my dear Peter?" she exclaimed. "Whatever put that quaint notion into your head? The heat must have been too much for you this afternoon. You never will wear a cap."
"I know that I am beneath contempt, of course," he insisted, "but when one despises a poor creature like me, it seems wanton cruelty just to kick it."
"I did not mean to hurt you, Peter," Rosemary rejoined more gently, "But when you are trying to talk nonsense, I must in self-defence bring you back to sanity."
"Nonsense? Would to God I could talk nonsense, act nonsense, live nonsense. Would to God my poor brain did refuse to take in the fact that you have promised to become Jasper's wife, and that I like a fool, have lost you for ever."
"Lost me, Peter?" she retorted, with just the faintest tremor of bitterness in her voice. "I don't think you ever sought me very seriously, did you?"
"I have loved you, Rosemary," Peter Blakeney said very slowly and very deliberately, "from the first moment I set eyes on you."
Then, as the girl shrugged her shoulders with an obvious attempt at indifference, he said more insistently: "You knew it, Rosemary."
"I know that you often said so, Peter," she replied coldly.
"You knew it that night on the river when you lay in my arms just like a lovely pixie, with your haunting eyes closed and your lips pressed to mine. You knew it then, Rosemary," he insisted.
But now she would no longer trust herself to speak. She had drawn herself farther back within the shadows. All that Peter could see of her was the exquisite oval of her face like a cameo carved against the dark, indefinite background. Her eyes he could not see, for they were veiled by the delicate, blue-veined lids, but he had a glimpse of her breast like mother-of-pearl, and of her small hand clinging tightly to the protecting curtain. The rest of her, swathed in the rich folds of her brocaded gown, was merged in the shadows, her auburn hair hidden by the velvet cap. Just by looking at her face, and on that clinging hand, he knew that everything within her was urging her to flee, was warning her not to listen, not to allow her memory to recall that wonderful night in June, on the river, when the tall grasses bending to the breeze, and a nightingale in the big walnut tree sang a lullaby to its mate. Intuitively he knew that she wished to flee, but that a certain something held her back, forced her to listen-a certain something that was a spell, an enchantment, or just the arms of her sister-pixies that clung around her and would not let her go.
"Don't let us talk about the past, Peter," she murmured at last involuntarily, with a pathetic note of appeal in her voice.
"I mean to talk about it, Rosemary," he retorted quietly, "just this once more. After that I will fall out of your life. You can cast me out and I will become one of the crowd. I won't even take your hand, I will try not to see you, not even in my dreams. Though every inflection of your voice makes my bones ache with longing, I shall try not to listen. Just now I held you while we danced; you never once looked at me, but I held you closer than any man ever held woman before. I held you with my soul and heart and body-just now and for the last time. And though you never looked at me once, Rosemary, you allowed me to hold you as I did-not your body only, but your soul-and whilst we danced and your sweet breath fanned my cheek you belonged to me as completely as you did that night on the river, even though you have pledged your word to Jasper. Though why you did that," he added, with a quaint change of mood, "God alone knows."