Daunt's smile was a mechanism. She knew that he had ceased to listen. As she looked at his side-face with her clear, kind eyes, a shadow came to her own. Her loyal heart was troubled. After her drive that afternoon, Barbara had kept her room on the plea of rest for the evening; she had not come down to dinner and had appeared only at the moment of starting. At the first glance, then, Patricia had noticed the change. The Barbara she had always known, of flashing impulses and girlish graces, was gone; the Barbara of the evening had seemed suddenly older, of even rarer beauty, perhaps, but with something of detachment, of unfamiliarity. Riding beside her to the ball, Patricia had felt, under the eager, brilliant gaiety, this chilly sense of estrangement, and it had puzzled her. Later she had come to connect it with the man of whose coming Barbara had told her, the man with handsome, bearded face who had seemed, since his greeting in the moment of their entrance, to take unobtrusive yet assured possession of such of her moments as were not given to the great. Withal, he had lent this an air of the natural and habitual which, nicely poised and completely conventional as it was, seemed to convey a subtle atmosphere of proprietorship. So now, as she saw Daunt's gaze, Patricia was a little sad. There had fallen a silence between them which he broke with a sudden exclamation. "No wonder!" he said. "No wonder what?" "That she is a success." "Success! I should think so. She's danced with three Ambassadors and Prince Hojo sat out two numbers with her. Just look at the men around her now!" The music had drifted into a waltz and the group about Barbara was dissolving. A dark face was bending near. Its owner put his arm about her and they glided into the throng. Ware, like all heavy men, danced perfectly and the pair seemed to skim the mirroring floor as easily as swallows, her red-bronze hair, caught under a web of seed-pearls, glowing like a net of fire-flies. Heads turned back over white shoulders and on the edges of the room people whispered as they passed. Floating lightly as sea-foam, the shimmering gown drew near, passing so close that Daunt could have touched it. The lovely white face, over her partner's shoulder, met Daunt's. For a fraction of a second Barbara's eyes looked into his--then swept by as if he had been empty air. It was as if a clenched hand had struck him across the face. He whitened. Patricia felt a sudden sting in her eyelids. She slipped her hand through his arm, and saying something about the heat (it was deliciously cool), drew him down the corridor. She chatted on airily, fighting a desire to cry. But when they came to the entrance of the cherry-blooms, he had not spoken a word. "I see mother still in the spook room," she said. "I must go back to her--no, please don't come with me! Thank you so much for bringing me so far."