‘I never say encouraging words. It is too foolish,’ cried Marjorie, detecting, in her misery, that Geoffrey showed signs of flight. ‘To begin with, we have so few gentlemen.’ ‘Few; why, there are five at least of Ours. There is Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.... Ah! going already? Then we must reckon without Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot. And it seems some of the clergy dance, a mild square dance, and----’ ‘Yes, yes, Marjorie!’ exclaimed a bevy of young girls, coming up and surrounding her like the chorus in an opera. ‘It is useless for you to be wise. Rosie has won the Seigneur to say Yes. Miss Tighe is ready. The piano is on its journey to the window.’ ‘Will you be my partner for the first waltz, Miss Bartrand?’ pleaded Oscar Jones. Now, at any prior moment of her life, Marjorie Bartrand, deficient neither in temper nor in courage, would, thus attacked, have held her ground stoutly. But the girl saw, or fancied she saw, that Geoffrey was eager to get away. Her spirit was charged to overflowing. The eyes of half the people in the room were fixed upon her expectantly. Easier, she thought, before Geoffrey, before them all, to give a coldly assenting bow than trust her voice to speak; so she gave it. Oscar Jones looked radiant. ‘Thank you, awfully, Miss Bartrand. This is a victory worth scoring. I will just go and start the corps de ballet, ask the orchestra to strike up some gay old waltz tune, and return to you.’ The corps de ballet was already setting towards the lawn. Cassandra Tighe had taken her place at the piano beside an open window. Geoffrey Arbuthnot and Marjorie, with youth, with love, with the heaviness of parting at their hearts, were alone. But their good chance was gone. The thread had snapped which bound together poor Marjorie’s monosyllables. Two minutes later she would be treading a waltz measure, the arm of Mr. Oscar Jones round her waist. And Geff (the conqueror, to whom _all_, in whitest, girlish faith, had been conceded) felt his blood rebel. He took the reprisals of his nobler sex, offered prompt, italicised repetition of the crushing word, apology. ‘You have accepted mine, have you not, Miss Bartrand?’ He held his hand out, steadily, for a last good-bye. ‘I accept the blame you choose to force on me,’ said Marjorie, turning aside her face. Cold, fettered, was the speech of both. Still, in this interval there was an encounter of pulses. Their hands had met; the farewell pressure was a lingering one. Propinquity--unspiritual god of youthful lovers--might, even at this supreme moment, have set things straight, had not old Andros Bartrand passed by, looked at them, smiled. Marjorie moved away with a start. She felt as much divided from her sweetheart as though the Channel already rolled between them.