Morrison sat watching. She was trembling and felt very miserable. She had been brought there by Clowes, who had been unable to resist the flattery of Calthrop's invitation. All these people seemed to her to be pretending to be happy, and she was oppressed with it all. She had not seen Mendel until he mounted the stage, and then her heart ached. She remembered the etched phrases of his letter to her. She had written to him, but nothing she could express on paper conveyed her feeling, her sense of being in the wrong, and her deep, instinctive conviction of the injustice of that wrong. . . . He had placed her in the wrong by talking of marriage so prematurely. As she looked round the room she was oppressed by all the men: great, hulking creatures, clumsy, cocksure, insensible, spinning their vain thoughts and vainer emotions round the women as a spider spins its threads round a caught fly. . . . She had often watched spiders dealing with the booty in their webs, and Calthrop reminded her of a spider when he looked at Clowes and laid his hand on her shoulder or fingered her arm. And Clowes lay still like a caught fly and suffered it. . . . Morrison was in revolt against it all. She was full of sweet life, and would not have it so treated. Her prudery was not shocked, for she had no prudery. The men might have their women so, if the women liked it, but never, never would she be so treated. It was because she had been able to sweep aside the sticky threads of vanity with Mendel that the ecstasy of the woods and the Heath had been possible. As she watched him now, she knew that he was different from all the others. He had brought an exaltation into the face of the common little girl who was his partner. He was giving her life, not taking it from her. Yet to see him made her unhappy. The music was vulgar, the people were vulgar, and he had no true place among them. But how he enjoyed it all! She shook with impatience at herself. It was hateful to be outside it, looking on, looking on. A young student had pestered her to dance with him. She turned to him and said:-- "I want to dance, please." Delighted, he sprang to his feet, gave her his arm, and whirled her into the dance. * * * * * Slowing down to take breath, Mendel looked in her direction. She was gone! A black despair seized him, a groan escaped him; he hugged Jessie tight against his body and plunged madly into the dance. The musicians had been given champagne. The violinist began to embroider upon the tune and the 'cellist followed with voluptuous thrumming chords.