is unbroken.

Then they sigh, then they look again, then they try to pretend that
nothing has happened to disturb them, and presently so far succeed that
conversation once more falls into an easy channel and flows on
unbrokenly.

She is smiling up at him in a happy fashion, long unknown to her, and he
is looking down at her with such an amount of satisfaction and content
in his gaze as cannot be mistaken. One might easily believe he has
forgotten the manner of their parting, and is now regarding her as his
own particular possession.

When this sort of thing has gone on for five minutes, Gower, feeling he
can stand it no longer, draws his breath quickly, and going over to the
small ottoman seats himself upon a low chair, quite close to his
betrothed; this effort he makes to assert his position, with all the air
of a man who is determined to do or die. Her fan is lying on her knee.
Taking it up, with a defiant glance at Roger, he opens it, and trifles
with it idly, in a sort of proprietary fashion.

Yet even while he does it, his heart is sad within him and filled with a
dire foreboding. The thought that he is unwelcome, that his presence at
this moment is probably being regarded in the light of an intrusion by
these two, so near to him, fills him with bitterness; he is almost
afraid to look at Dulce, lest he shall read in her eyes a cold
disapprobation of his conduct in thus interrupting her _tete-a-tete_,
when to his surprise a little hand is laid upon his arm, and Dulce's
voice asks him a question that instantly draws him into the
conversation.

She is smiling very kindly at him; more kindly indeed than she has done
for many days; she is in such a happy mood, in such wonderfully gay,
bright spirits, that all the world seems good to her, and it becomes
necessary to her to impart her joyousness to all around. _Every one_
must be happy to-night, she tells herself; and so, as I have said
before, she smiles on Gower, and pats him gently on the arm, and raises
him at once to the seventh heaven out of the very lowest depths of
despair.

The change is so sudden that Stephen naturally loses his head a little.
He draws his chair even nearer to the ottoman. He determines to outsit
Roger. In five minutes--in half an hour, at all events--the fellow will
be obliged to go and speak to somebody else, if only for decency's sake.
And then there is every chance that the dressing-bell will soon ring.
Dulce's extreme delight, so i