When she spoke like that, Rose’s father used to take his hands off the table and put them in his lap and stare down at them and say nothing. When she left them and went back to the shop he always sighed, but he did not look at Rose, and then he always said, without raising his head, “No use provoking her. Let her have her say. She means no harm.”

Rose looked at the masks and pretended to be so interested in them, far away as they were, that she could not look into the faces of any of the dancers as they went by. She felt that she had been stranded there in front of everybody. She blamed Jim Nolan, who had been her partner in the last dance. He had given her to understand that he would be back, and so she had waited for him and he had not come back at all. At first she imagined he had been delayed, but now she realized he had never had the slightest intention of coming back. If she had only known, she could have found her way out of the room and then she would not be standing here making a show of herself. It was not fair. There was a chance he might have been annoyed at what she said to him, but he had not seemed annoyed, and he must have known she meant no harm.

She had been delighted when Jim asked her for a dance. He had worked at the same counter with her father years ago, but he was not more than ten years older than she was, and he was very handsome and tall. The other men who had asked her to dance were quite old men, all of them married and old enough to be her father. She was surprised that Jim took any notice at all of her, because he was popular and she knew that every girl in the room was watching him. He had a lovely friendly smile. She had always seen him, all her life, in Ramsay’s and around the town, walking with somebody, usually a man; he was great with the girls, but the women laughed when his name came up and said he would be hard to catch. He was different from the other men, very dark; there was something foreign about him, like an actor.