Lord Lathkill was dancing, and smiling very curiously down into his partner's face. The Victrola was at its loudest. Carlotta and I looked at one another, with hardly the heart to start again. The house felt hollow and gruesome. One wanted to get out, to get away from the cold, uncanny blight which filled the air. "Oh, I say, keep the ball rolling," called Lord Lathkill. "Come," I said to Carlotta. Even then she hung back a little. If she had not suffered, and lost so much, she would have gone upstairs at once to struggle in the silent wrestling of wills with her mother-in-law. Even now, _that_ particular fight drew her, almost the strongest. But I took her hand. "Come," I said. "Let us dance it down. We'll roll the ball the opposite way." She danced with me, but she was absent, unwilling. The empty gloom of the house, the sense of cold, and of deadening opposition, pressed us down. I was looking back over my life, and thinking how the cold weight of an unliving spirit was slowly crushing all warmth and vitality out of everything. Even Carlotta herself had gone numb again, cold and resistant even to me. The thing seemed to happen wholesale in her. "One has to choose to live," I said, dancing on. But I was powerless. With a woman, when her spirit goes inert in opposition, a man can do nothing. I felt my life-flow sinking in my body. "This house is awfully depressing," I said to her, as we mechanically danced. "Why don't you _do_ something? Why don't you get out of this tangle? Why don't you break it?" "How?" she said. I looked down at her, wondering why she was suddenly hostile. "You needn't fight," I said. "You needn't fight it. Don't get tangled up in it. Just side-step, on to another ground." She made a pause of impatience before she replied: "I don't see where I am to side-step to, precisely." "You do," said I. "A little while ago, you were warm and unfolded and good. Now you are shut up and prickly, in the cold. You needn't be. Why not stay warm?" "It's nothing I do," she said coldly. "It is. Stay warm to me. I am here. Why clutch in a tug-of-war with Lady Lathkill?" "Do I clutch in a tug-of-war with my mother-in-law?" "You know you do." She looked up at me, with a faint little shadow of guilt and beseeching, but with a _moue_ of cold obstinacy dominant. "Let's have done," said I. And in cold silence we sat side by side on the lounge. The other two danced on. They at any rate were in unison. One could see from the swing of their limbs. Mrs. Hale's yellow-brown eyes looked at me every time she came round. "Why does she look at me?" I said. "I can't imagine," said Carlotta, with a cold grimace. "I'd better go upstairs and see what's happening," she said, suddenly rising and disappearing in a breath.