Then Mr. Sutton stood against the wall and watched her. He had not
learned to dance in the days of his youth, and heroic effort since had
been of no avail. He had, indeed, after humiliating and anguished
perseverance, succeeded in learning the correct mathematical movements
of the feet in the two-step and the waltz, and he knew how to turn,
without tuition; but to take the steps and turn as he did so he could
not have done to save his immortal soul. If the offering up of pigeons
or of lambs could have propitiated the gods who presided over the
Terpsichorean art, Mr. Sutton’s domestic altars would have been reeking
with sacrifice. Girls never looked so beautiful to his susceptible heart
as when they were whirling past him to the inspiriting dance music. It
seemed really pathetic not to be able to do it too! He would have liked
in the present instance, in default of greater skill, to have symbolized
his lightness of heart by taking Dosia by her two hands and jumping up
and down the room with her, after a fashion he had practiced as a little
boy.
It was at the end of the evening that Dosia saw Lawson Barr standing in
the doorway by one of the booths, with his overcoat on and his hat held
in his hand. He was not looking at her, but talking to another man. She
watched him under her eyelids, as she had done once before, and rather
wondered that she had thought him attractive; he looked thinner and
darker than she had thought, and more worn, and he had more than ever
the peculiar effect of being unlike other people—his overcoat hung
carelessly on him, and his necktie was prominent when almost all the
other young men were in evening dress. He gave somewhat the impression
of an Oriental in civilized clothing. She disclaimed to herself the fact
that he had lingered in her thought at all.
He had been the subject of Lois’ conversation on one of the afternoons
of Dosia’s convalescence, and she had since heard him spoken of by
others, and always in the same tone. When she asked particularly about
him, she was met by the casual answer, “Oh, everybody knows what Lawson
is.” He was liked, she found, to a certain extent, by everyone; but he
carried no weight, and there seemed to be social limitations which it
was an understood thing that he was not to pass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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