Book 6 - Chapter 10 - Page 2

that was continually threatening to
overpower him. He told himself so; and yet he had once or twice felt a
certain savage resistance, and at another moment a shuddering
repugnance, to this intrusion of Philip's image, which almost made it
a new incitement to rush toward Maggie and claim her for himself.
Nevertheless, he had done what he meant to do this evening,--he had
kept aloof from her; he had hardly looked at her; and he had been
gayly assiduous to Lucy. But now his eyes were devouring Maggie; he
felt inclined to kick young Torry out of the dance, and take his
place. Then he wanted the dance to end that he might get rid of his
partner. The possibility that he too should dance with Maggie, and
have her hand in his so long, was beginning to possess him like a
thirst. But even now their hands were meeting in the dance,--were
meeting still to the very end of it, though they were far off each
other.

Stephen hardly knew what happened, or in what automatic way he got
through the duties of politeness in the interval, until he was free
and saw Maggie seated alone again, at the farther end of the room. He
made his way toward her round the couples that were forming for the
waltz; and when Maggie became conscious that she was the person he
sought, she felt, in spite of all the thoughts that had gone before, a
glowing gladness at heart. Her eyes and cheeks were still brightened
with her childlike enthusiasm in the dance; her whole frame was set to
joy and tenderness; even the coming pain could not seem bitter,--she
was ready to welcome it as a part of life, for life at this moment
seemed a keen, vibrating consciousness poised above pleasure or pain.
This one, this last night, she might expand unrestrainedly in the
warmth of the present, without those chill, eating thoughts of the
past and the future.

"They're going to waltz again," said Stephen, bending to speak to her,
with that glance and tone of subdued tenderness which young dreams
create to themselves in the summer woods when low, cooing voices fill
the air. Such glances and tones bring the breath of poetry with them
into a room that is half stifling with glaring gas and hard
flirtation.

"They are going to waltz again. It is rather dizzy work to look on,
and the room is very warm; shall we walk about a little?"

He took her hand and placed it within his arm, and they walked on into
the sitting-room, where the tables were strewn with engravings for the
accommodation of visitors who would not want to look at them. But no
visitors were here at this moment. They passed on into the
conservatory.

"How strange and unreal the trees and flowers look with the lights
among them!" said Maggie, in a low voice. "They look as if they