With that immobility of lips, learned by all imprisoned in Society, Lily
Malvezin murmured:
"Who's that she's dancing with? Is it the dark horse, Bertie?"
Through lips no less immobile Bertie answered:
"Forty to one, no takers."
But those inquisitive bright eyes still followed Barbara, drifting in
the dance, like a great waterlily caught in the swirl of a mill pool;
and the thought passed through that pretty head:
"She's hooked him. It's naughty of Babs, really!" And then she saw
leaning against a pillar another whose eyes also were following those
two; and she thought: "H'm! Poor Claud--no wonder he's looking like
that. Oh! Babs!"
By one of the statues on the terrace Barbara and her partner stood,
where trees, disfigured by no gaudy lanterns, offered the refreshment of
their darkness and serenity.
Wrapped in her new pale languor, still breathing deeply from the waltz,
she seemed to Courtier too utterly moulded out of loveliness. To what
end should a man frame speeches to a vision! She was but an incarnation
of beauty imprinted on the air, and would fade out at a touch-like the
sudden ghosts of enchantment that came to one under the blue, and the
starlit snow of a mountain night, or in a birch wood all wistful golden!
Speech seemed but desecration! Besides, what of interest was there
for him to say in this world of hers, so bewildering and of such glib
assurance--this world that was like a building, whose every window was
shut and had a blind drawn down.
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