Perhaps, had I thought this out at the table, I should have got back to myself and my normal ease; but I didn't, and that long and terrible dinner was one long and terrible agony of stage fright. When the ladies withdrew, the other men drew together, talking of people I did not know and of things I did not care about--I thought then that they were avoiding me deliberately as a flock of tame ducks avoids a wild one that some wind has accidentally blown down among them. I know now that my forbidding aspect must have been responsible for my isolations, However, I sat alone, sullenly resisting old Ellersly's constrained efforts to get me into the conversation, and angrily suspicious that Langdon was enjoying my discomfiture more than the cigarette he was apparently absorbed in. Old Ellersly, growing more and more nervous before my dark and sullen look, finally seated himself beside me. “I hope you'll stay after the others have gone,” said he. “They'll leave early, and we can have a quiet smoke and talk.” All unstrung though I was, I yet had the desperate courage to resolve that I'd not leave, defeated in the eyes of the one person whose opinion I really cared about. “Very well,” said I, in reply to him. He and I did not follow the others to the drawing-room, but turned into the library adjoining. From where I seated myself I could see part of the drawing-room--saw the others leaving, saw Langdon lingering, ignoring the impatient glances of his wife, while he talked on and on with Miss Ellersly. Her face was full toward me; she was not aware that I was looking at her, I am sure, for she did not once lift her eyes. As I sat studying her, everything else was crowded out of my mind. She was indeed wonderful--too wonderful and fine and fragile, it seemed to me at that moment, for one so plain and rough as I. “Incredible,” thought I, “that she is the child of such a pair as Ellersly and his wife--but again, has she any less in common with them than she'd have with any other pair of human creatures?” Her slender white arms, her slender white shoulders, the bloom on her skin, the graceful, careless way her hair grew round her forehead and at the nape of her neck, the rather haughty expression of her small face softened into sweetness and even tenderness, now that she was talking at her ease with one whom she regarded as of her own kind--“but he isn't!” I protested to myself. “Langdon--none of these men--none of these women, is fit to associate with her. They can't appreciate her. She belongs to me who can.” And I had a mad impulse then and there to seize her and bear her away--home--to the home she could make for me out of what I would shower upon her.