Rose knew that when a thing is gone it is gone. She tried not to think about the handkerchief, but she could not forget that it had been, was being, kicked around the room like a rag. There was no use thinking about it, and there was no use wondering who those plaster casts that he had called masks represented, or what names those faces had been called by when they were alive. If he were alive now, she would ask the names and tell him when she went home tonight. She would not mind asking. He had always said that she was very brave. But if he were alive now, he would be here tonight with all the rest of them, and her mother would be here and the three of them would be the center of attention, because her father would have got along so fast and gone so high in Ramsay’s after the curtains were up.

Rose had carefully not been staring at the dancers as they went by, but now she looked and saw, quite close, a tall dark girl with a pearly forehead. The girl was Dr. Malloy’s wife, his bride, and she was dancing with her husband. They had been dancing together during most of the evening, and once Rose had seen them talking and laughing with Mrs. Ramsay. They had not been married long. They had met in Dublin and been married there and Mrs. Malloy was still very much of a stranger. Rose had heard her mother say that they were only children. And the woman next door had said they were children who did not know how well off they were and that some people went through life being spoiled. The woman next door had gone on to say that it was only an accident they had married at all, because Dr. Malloy had been interested in another girl altogether, and he had only married this one on the rebound. Rose’s mother had said, “Oh, everyone knows she was not his first choice, and she knows it, too, poor girl.” The Malloys were dancing smoothly in time with the music, which had grown faster, but they were not smiling or talking. They were looking at each other and their faces reflected a common memory that was still too new to be familiar and too brilliant to be believed in. Rose thought, They cannot take their eyes off each other.