ere you too lazy?"

Michael thought she moved closer to him as they danced.

"Answer me, will you; answer me, I say. Were you too lazy to resist, or
did you enjoy being cheapened by that insufferable brute you were
flirting with?"

Michael in his rage of remembrance twisted her hand. But she made no
gesture, nor uttered any sound of pain. Instead she sank closer to his
arms, and as the dance rolled on, he told himself triumphantly that,
while she was with him, she was his again.

What did the past matter?

"Ah, Lily, you love me still! I'll ask no more questions. Am I out of
step?"

"No, not now," she whispered, and he saw that her face was pale with the
swoon of their dancing.

"Take off that silly mask," he commanded. "Take it off and give it to
me. I can hold you with one arm."

She obeyed him, and with a tremendous exultation he swung her round, as
if indeed he were carrying her to the edge of the world. The mask no
longer veiled her face; her eyelids drooped, clouding her eyes; her
lips were parted: she was now dead white. Michael crooked her left arm
until he could touch her shoulder.

"Look at me. Look at me. The dance will soon be over."

She opened her eyes, and into their depths of dusky blue he danced and
danced until, waking with the end of the music, he found himself and
Lily close to Sylvia Scarlett, who was laughing at them where she stood
in the corner of the room under a canopy of holly.

Lily was for the rest of the evening herself as Michael had always known
her. She had always been superficially indifferent to anything that was
happening round her, and she behaved at this carnival as if it were a
street full of dull people among whom by chance she was walking. Nor
with her companions was she much more alert, though when she danced with
Michael her indifference became a passionate languor. Soon after
midnight both the girls declared they were tired of the Redcliffe Hall,
and they asked Michael to escort them home. He was going to fetch a cab,
but they stopped him, saying that Tinderbox Lane, where they lived, was
only a little way along on the other side of the Fulham Road. The fog
was very dense when they came out, and Michael took the girls' arms with
a delicious sense of intimacy, with a feeling, too, of extraordinary
freedom from the world, as if they were all three embarked upon an
adventure in this eclipse of fog. He had packed their shoes deep down in
the pockets of his overcoat,