In the interval the two couples came together again, and there was much general chatter and laughter. Gell joined freely in both, and if at first he had had any backward thoughts of the promise he had given to his father they were gone by this time. Another dance began and without changing partners they set off afresh, Stowell taking Bessie's hand with a firmer grasp and Bessie holding to his shoulder with a stronger sense of possession. His nerves were tingling. Turning round and round among women's smiling faces, and with Bessie's smiling face by his side, he had the sense of sweeping his partner along with an energy of physical power he had never felt before. When the orchestra stopped the second time and they went in search of their companions, they discovered Susie on a seat, panting and perspiring, and Gell fanning her with the brim of his straw hat. Victor's excitement was becoming feverish. He wanted Bessie to himself, and during the third dance he felt himself dragging her to the opposite side of the hall. She knew what he was doing, and found it enchanting to be carried off by sheer force. When the dance came to an end Victor put Bessie's moist hand through his arm and walked up and down with her. Her throat was throbbing and her breast rising and falling under her low-cut blouse. They spoke little, but sometimes he turned his head to look at her, and then she turned her eyes to his. He thought her black eyes were looking blacker than ever. The evening was now at its zenith, and the orchestra was tuning up for the "shadow-dance." The white lights on the walls went out, and over the arc lamps in the glass roof a number of coloured disks were passed, to throw shadows over the dancers, as of the sunrise, the sunset, the moon and the night with its stars. The dance itself was of a nondescript kind in which at intervals, the man, with a whoop, lifted his partner off her feet and swung her round him in his arms--a sort of symbol of marriage by capture. When the shadow-dance ended there was much hand-clapping among the dancers. It had to be repeated, this time with a more rapid movement and to the accompaniment of a song, which, being sung by the men in chorus, made the hall throb like the inside of a drum. Many of the dancers fell out exhausted, but Victor and Bessie kept up to the last. Then the big side doors were thrown open, and amid a babel of noise, cries and laughter, nearly all the dancers trooped out of the hall into the garden to cool. Victor gave his arm to Bessie and they went out also. Lights gleamed here and there in the darkness of the trees, throwing shadows full of mystery and charm. After a while the orchestra within was heard beginning again, and most of the dancers hastened back to the hall, but Victor said, "Let us stay out a little longer."