"Shall we dance?"
In the terribly disquieting whirl of his thoughts, which shared the dance"s circling propensities, Odd held fast to one fixed kernel of desire; he must hear from Hilda"s lips why she had refused Allan Hope.
An uneasy consciousness of Katherine crossed his mind once and again with a dull ache of self-reproach, all the more insistent from his realization that its cause was not so much the infidelity to Katherine as that Hilda would think him a sorry villain.
Katherine seemed to be dancing and enjoying herself. She knew that his energy this evening was on Hilda"s account; he had claimed the responsibility for Hilda. Katherine would not consider herself neglected, of that Peter felt sure, relying, with perhaps a display of the dulness she had discovered in him, upon her confidence and common sense. Outwardly, at least, he would never betray that confidence; there was some rather dislocated consolation in that.
Hilda was a little breathless when he came to claim her for the second cl.u.s.ter of waltzes. It was near the end of the evening.
"I have been dancing _steadily_," she announced, "and twice down to supper! Did you try any of the narrow little sandwiches? So good!"
"And you still don"t grudge me my waltzes?"
"I like yours _best_!" she said, smiling at him as she laid her hand on his shoulder. They took a few turns around the room and then Hilda owned that she was a little tired. They sat down again on the sofa.
"Hilda!" said Odd suddenly, "will you think me very rude if I ask you why you refused Allan Hope?"
Hilda turned a startled glance upon him.
"No; perhaps not," she answered, though the voice was rather frigid.
"You don"t think I have a right to ask, do you?"
"Well, the answer is so evident."
"Is it?" Hilda had looked away at the dancers; she turned her head now half unwillingly and glanced at him, smiling.
"I would not have refused him if I had loved him, would I? You know that. It doesn"t seem quite fair, quite kind, to talk of, does it?"
"Not to me even? I have been interested in it for a long time. Katherine told me, and Mary."
"I don"t know why they should have been so sure," said Hilda, with some hardness of tone. "I never encouraged him. I avoided him." She looked at Odd again. "But I am not angry with you; if any one has a right, you have."
"Thanks; thanks, dear. You understand, you know my interest, my anxiety. It seemed so--happy for both. And you care for no one else?"
"No one else." Hilda"s eyes rested on his with clear sincerity.
"Don"t you ever intend to marry, Hilda?" Odd was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, and looking at the floor. There was certainly a tension in his voice, and he felt that Hilda was scanning him with some wonder.
"Does a refusal to take one person imply that? I have made no vows."
"I don"t see--" Odd paused; "I don"t see why you shouldn"t care for Hope."
"Are you going to plead his cause?" she asked lightly.
"Would it not be for your happiness?" Odd sat upright now, putting on his eyegla.s.ses and looking at her with a certain air of resolution.
"I don"t love him." Hilda returned the look sweetly and frankly.
"What do you know of love, you child? Why not have given him a chance, put him on trial? Nothing wins a woman like wooing."
"How didactic we are becoming. I am afraid I should really get to loathe poor Lord Allan if I had given him leave to woo me."
"I suppose you think him too unindividual, too much of a pattern with other healthy and hearty young men. Don"t you know, foolish child, that a good man, a man who would love you as he would, make you the husband he would, is a rarity and very individual?"
Odd found a perverse pleasure in his own paternally admonishing att.i.tude. Hilda"s lightly amused but touched look implied a confidence so charming that he found the att.i.tude sublimely courageous.
"I suppose so," she said, and she added, "I haven"t one word to say against Lord Allan, except--" She paused meditatively.
"Except what?" Odd asked rather breathlessly.
"He doesn"t really _need_ me."
"Doesn"t _need_ you! Why, the man is desperately in love with you!"
"He needs a wife, but he doesn"t need _me_."
"You are subtle, Hilda."
"I don"t think I am _that_."
"You are waiting, then, for some one who can satisfy you as to his _need_ of you?"
"I shall only marry that person."
Hilda jumped up. "But I"m not waiting at all, you know. _Dansons maintenant!_ Your task is nearly over!"
It was very late when Odd gave Hilda up to her last partner, and joined Katherine in a small antechamber, where she was sitting among flowers, talking to an appreciative Frenchman. This gentleman, with the ceremonious bow of his race, made away when Miss Archinard"s _fiance_ appeared, and Odd dropped into the vacated seat with a horrible sinking of the heart. The dull self-reproach was now acute, he felt meanly guilty. Katherine looked at him funnily--very good-humoredly.
"I didn"t know you had it in you to dance so well and so persistently, Peter. You have done honor to Hilda"s ball."
"I hope I wasn"t too selfishly monopolizing."
"Oh, you had a right to a certain monopoly since, owing to you only, she came," and Katherine added, smiling still more good-humoredly, "I am _not_ jealous, Peter."
He turned to look at her. The words, the playful tone in which they were uttered, struck him like a blow. His guilty consciousness of his own feeling gave them a supreme n.o.bility. She was _not_ jealous. What a cur he would be if ever he gave her apparent cause for jealousy. The cause was there; his task must be to keep it hidden.
"But suppose _I_ am?" he said; "you haven"t given me a single dance."
Katherine"s smile was placid; she did not say that he had not asked for one. Indeed they had rarely danced together.
"I think of going to England in a day or two, Peter," she observed. "The Devreuxs have asked me to spend a month with them."
Peter sat very still.
"A sudden decision, Kathy?"
"No, not so sudden. Our _tete-a-tete_ can"t be prolonged forever."