Leonora

at histrionic triumph. The fête was to surpass in splendour all previous entertainments of the kind recorded in the annals of the town. It was talked a

met Leonora one afternoon in the street, 'we are rely

had in it a touch of gentle cynic

o the capricious frigidity of Millicent's attitude towards him, he had been much

said, 'I suppos

med. 'If you come you conquer

Association for reform in the method of paying firemen and placers; his ability was everywhere recognised. At the same time, however, the Five Towns looked askance at him. Rumour revived, and said that he could not keep up his juggling performance for ever. He was known to have speculated heavily for a rise in the shares of a great brewery which had falsified the prophecies of its founders when they benevolently sold it to the investing public. Some people wondered how long John could hold those shares in a falling market. Leonora had no definite knowledge of her husband's affairs, since neither John nor any other person breathed a word to her about them. A

uncle, both rapidly ageing? And of what use to tell John? She desired Ethel's happiness, but from that moment she felt like an accomplice in the furtive wooing, and it seemed to her that she had forfeited both the confidence of her husband and the respect of her daughter. Months ago she had meant by force of some ini

t was precisely in chemistry that she had failed. She arrived from London in tears, and the tears were renewed when the formal announcement of defeat came three weeks later by telegraph and John added gaiety to the occasion by r

she quite intended to go on the stage, but they were enjoined to say nothing. Consequently John Stanway was one of the few people in Bursley unaware of the definiteness of Milly's private plans; Leonora was another. Leonora sometimes felt that M

d to assuage the customary asperities of home life, so far as possible, by a demeanour of generous quick acquiescence, and she had not entirely failed. Yet the girls, with all the obtuseness and insensibility of adolescence, never thought of giving her the one reward which she desired. She sought tremulously to win their intimacy, but she sought to

s son combined the best qualities of Harry Burgess and Fred Ryley. She made him tall as herself, handsome as herself, and like herself elegant. Shrewd, clever, and passably virtuous, he was nevertheless distinctly capable of follies; but he told her everything, even the worst, and though sometimes she frowned he smiled away the frown. He adored her; he appreci

mlow had not fulfilled his promise of writing, Leonora would answer evenly, 'No,

armpits, and, behind, the fine hollow of her back. The sleeves were long and full with tight wrists, ending in black lace. A band of pale pink silk, covered with white lace, wandered up one sleeve, crossed her breast in strict conformity with the top of the corsage, and wandered down the other sleeve; at the armpits, below the rondures, this band was punctuated with a pink rose. An ex

through the cloak-room in a moment, Rose first; Rose was human that evening. Leonora did not mind; she anticipated the dance with neither joy nor melancholy, hoping nothing from it in her mood of neutral calm. John was talking with David Dain at the entrance to the gen

id awkwardly. In evening dress he

he knew he admired her, and would have given much to dance with her; but she did not care for his hea

elieve,' he said again, movin

w many invitati

I d

this.' And the lawyer escaped from her pres

er charm and all her distinction. 'What chivalry! What courtlin

ng quickly. She did not choose to greet them waiting there alone, and so she deliberately tu

w was s

dozens of people in the Five Towns. She bit her lip, surprised and angered at her own agitation. At the same time she remembered-and why should she remember?-some gossip of J

teen?' she contempt

ctor: 'Come along into the refreshment-room for a minute.' Determined n

e, and on the lowest stair stood Arthur Twemlow. She had begun to traverse

of a swift and mysterious convulsion. 'Why do

ot deserted her in the cloak-room, if the old doctor had not provided himself with a new supply of naughty stories, if indeed everything had not occurred exactly as it had occurred-she would have been forced to undergo in the presence of witnesses the shock w

Can you not see what I suffer!' It was her sad g

appen?' his answered. 'A

her lips murmured: 'Well,

e the fi

gess at the Empire on Thursday night, and he told me about this affair and gave me a

n the girls?'

had

t like a convalescent trying to walk after a long illness.

t, and the next instant he was supporting her up the steps. Anything migh

arated from the world, sufficient to themselves and gloriously sufficient. Then some one opened the doors from within; the sound of the music, suddenly fr

d them enthralled through endless curves of infallible beauty and grace. Form, colour, movement, melody, and the voluptuous galvanism of delicate contacts were all combined in this unique ritual of the dance, this strange convention whose significance emerged from one mystery deeper than the fundamental notes of the bass-fiddle, and lost itself in ano

lised the human attitude that night. As leaning heavily on a man's arm she crossed the floor under the blazing chandelier, she secretly exulted in each stitch of her incredible labour. Two hours, and she would be back in the cold, celibate bedroom, littered with the shabby realities of existence; and the spotted glass would mirror her lugubrious yawn! Eight hours, and she would be in the dreadful shop, tying on the black

it, and she liked him for his awkwardness; it seemed to her that Ethel was very beautiful. Arthur pointed out Rose, who was standing up with the lady member of the School Board. Then Leonora caught sight of Millicent in the distance, handing her programme to the conductor of the opera; she recalled the notorious boast of the conductor that he never k

the orchestra

?' Arthur

es were forming. Her last thoughts as she gave him her hand were thoughts half-pitiful and h

y composition which more than any other work of art unites all western nations in a common delight, which is adored equally by profound musicians and by the light

xcitement straining impatiently

ed, quie

tz itself, she was conscious that his hold of her became firmer and more assertive, and she surren

ecting pressures. She was happy, but her bliss had in it that element of stinging pain, of intolerable anticipation, which is seldom absent from a felicity too intense. 'Surely I shall sink down and die!' said her heart, seeming to faint at the joyous crises of the music, which rose and fell in tides of varying rapture. Nevertheless she was determined to drink the cup slowly, to taste every drop of that sweet and excruciating happiness. She would not utterly abandon herself. The fear of inanition was only a wayward pretence, after all, and her strong nature cried out for further tests to prove its fortitude and its power of dissimulation. As the band slipped into the final section of the waltz, she wilfully dragged the time, deepening a little the curious superficial languor which con

tain her usual cold nonchalant glance in examining the room, nor look at Arthur in a natural way. She had the illusion that every one must be staring at her with amazed curiosi

Arthur asked. She observed with annoyance that h

. But she could not. On the contrary she was seized with a strong impulse to say to him entreatingly: 'Leave me,' as though she were a person on the stage. She thoug

, and added hastily, with the most seductive sm

he said anxiously, almost

left her; she did n

he honour, gr

era who addressed her in his e

te naturally. 'I've hurt my foot a little-Oh, it's no

consequences of the fiction might continue throughout the evening. For a moment she had the idea of announcing a sprained ankle and of returning home at once.

her. 'Just fancy Mr. Twemlow being bac

he

stairs, and told me he must

man with a gardenia, and Rose, flushed and s

he steps which modern enthusiasm for the waltz had not extinguished. And they found an appreciable number of followers. The organisers of the ball, the upholders of correctness, punctilio, and the mode, fretted and fought against the antagonistic influence. 'Ass!' said the conductor of the opera bitterly when Harry Burgess told him that Stanway had suggested Sir Roger de Coverley for an extra, 'I wonder what his wife thinks of him!' Sir Roger de Coverley was not da

e select apartment with his followers, 'time to go. Carpenter

plied. 'Are you

t she could not believe the evenin

not patronise me too much.' Fred could not dance, but he had audaciously sat out four dances with Ethel, at this his first ball, and the serious young man had the strange agreeable sensation of feeling a dog. He dared not, however, accompany Ethel to the carriage, as Harry Burgess accompanied Millicent. Harry had been partially restored to favour a

still elated, turning on the box-seat as the waggonette rattled

omething thro

coming?'

try to.' John

queer,' sai

aggressive

oing off suddenly.' Millicent stopped and then added:

l murmured, roused from letha

mumble

y. 'These late nights don't suit her. So y

r. John threw his c

r brain, burning and labouring there so conspicuously amid the other brains sombre and dormant? And was it possible that the girls had observed the qualities of Arthur's dancing and had observed nothing else? Common sense tried to reassure her, and did not quite succeed. Her attitude resembled that of a person who leans against a firm rail over the edge of a precipice: there is no danger, but the precipice is so deep that he fears; and though the fear is a torture the sinister magnetism of the abyss forbids him to withdraw. She lived again in the waltz; in the gliding motions of it, the delicious fluctuations of the reverse, the long trance-like union, the instinctive avoidances of other contact. She whispered the music, endlessly repeating those poignant and voluptuous phrases which linger in the memory of all the world. And she recalled and reconstituted Arthur's physical presence, and the emanating charm of

ght was humid and very dark. Leonora and the girls stood waiting on the gravel, and John groped his way into the blackness of the portico to unfasten the door. A faint gleam from the hall-gas came throu

annoyance. He had fallen headlong into the hall, and hi

y proteste

ed the gas on to the full, a

was a tramp lying there. Ge

to examine a form which lay in the portico,

hach,' said Eth

cried John, 'and he's come up to te

capricious power which conferred experience on mortals like a wonderful gif