Joanna, who did not know the professor’s wife by sight, had taken no part in the discussion. And she had been all the time aware of Pender’s so different isolation, which yet seemed to bring him nearer to her. She felt a hatred rising in her against this Mrs. Tullis, against Mrs. Pender, against Mildred, perhaps against all women, because they were somehow responsible for the despicable uneasiness under Pender’s practised surface.

She wondered if he would want to talk to her at all at the dance. Then she would discover him, perhaps.

With this thought, this longing, there flashed unbidden in her memory the vision of a little door in Italy, once pointed out by Mario. It was that door in the garden wall of a villa through which a famous woman was said to have welcomed her lover. Strange that Joanna should think of it now! Strange that it should have remained forgotten all these years to recur this evening like an unacknowledged, all unsatisfied desire!

IV

At the School the fun was in full swing when Mildred’s party arrived. A waltz came to an end as they were taking off their wraps, and Joanna thought Mrs. Plummer would never stop re-arranging her hair, which stayed perfectly untidy in spite of prolonged fingering.

When at last they entered the dancing-room, the students were grouping themselves noisily for the foursome reel. Most of the dancers already stood facing one another, in two double lines which stretched from end to end of the long class-room; but still here and there some couples ran linked, laugihing and sliding on the polished floor in a race for the few gaps left. Onlookers sat round on benches or on the floor. Many had kept on their overalls of holland or blue linen, and numbers of the girls were so young that their hair still hung over their shoulders. There was something easy-going, almost countrified about these dances. The sloping timbered ceiling hung with a few lanterns of yellowish paper, made Joanna feel as if she were in a barn; and she thought that the easels and thrones stacked in each corner looked like farm implements.

And if it was a village festival, Mr. Valentine Plummer united in himself the parts of the Squire and the Parson. He came effusively to greet the newcomers, pressed them to join in at once, and shepherded them to the far end of the room. “There is always room at the top,” he said, cracking his little parsonish joke. But neither the Lovatts nor Mrs. Plummer nor Pender could dance the reel.

Lawrence Urquhart glanced at Joanna.

“You, then, bella Signora!” exclaimed the Director jocosely. “Come. Shall it be said that a Scotswoman refused to take part in a reel?”

“Will you?” asked Lawrence.

But Joanna shook her head, excusing herself.

“Ah! but do, do dance it!”