Their
eyes met in an isolation as supreme as if they had been alone. It was an
attraction the more dangerous because unformulated--a possession without
previous pledge, promise, or even intention--a love that did not require
to be "made."
He approached her quietly and even more coolly than he thought possible.
"Will you allow me a trial?" he asked.
She looked in his face, and as if she had not heard the question but was
following her own thought, said, "I knew you would come; I saw you when
you first came in." Without another word she put her hand in his, and
as if it were part of an instinctive action of drawing closer to him,
caught with her advancing foot the accent of the waltz, and the next
moment the room seemed to slip away from them into whirling space.
The whole thing had passed so rapidly from the moment he approached
her to the first graceful swing of her full skirt at his side, that it
seemed to him almost like the embrace of a lovers' meeting. He had
often been as near her before, had stood at her side at school, and even
leaned over her desk, but always with an irritated instinct of reserve
that had equally affected her, and which he now understood.
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