this relaxation. Miss
Filkin began to oblige vigorously on the piano, Miss Dora granted Mr
Winter's request, which he made with elaborate humour as an impudent old
bachelor whom "the boys" would presently take outside and kill. Lorne
watched him make it, envying him his assurance; and Miss Milburn was
aware that he watched and aware that he envied. The room filled with
gaiety and movement: Mr Milburn, sidling dramatically along the wall to
escape the rotatory couples, admonished Mr Murchison to get a partner.
He withdrew himself from the observation of Miss Dora and Mr Winter, and
approached a young lady on a sofa, who said "With very great pleasure."
When the dance was over he re-established the young lady on the sofa
and fanned her with energy. Looking across the room, he saw that
Walter Winter, seated beside Dora, was fanning himself. He thought
it disgusting and, for some reason which he did not pause to explore,
exactly like Winter. He had met Miss Milburn once or twice before
without seeing her in any special way: here, at home, the centre of the
little conventions that at once protected and revealed her, conventions
bound up in the impressive figures of her mother and her aunt, she had
a new interest, and all the attraction of that which is not easily come
by. It is also possible that although Lorne had met her before, she
had not met him; she was meeting him now for the first time, as she
sat directly opposite and talked very gracefully to Walter Winter.
Addressing Walter Winter, Lorne was the object of her pretty remarks.
While Mr Winter had her superficial attention, he was the bland medium
which handed her on. Her consciousness was fixed on young Mr Murchison,
quite occupied with him: she could not imagine why they had not asked
him long ago; he wasn't exactly "swell," but you could see he was
somebody. So already she figured the potential distinction in the set
of his shoulders and the carriage of his head. It might have been
translated in simple terms of integrity and force by anyone who looked
for those things. Miss Milburn was incapable of such detail, but she saw
truly enough in the mass.

Lorne, on the opposite sofa, looked at her across the town's traditions
of Milburn exclusiveness. Oddly enough, at this moment when he might
have considered that he had overcome them, they seemed to gather force,
exactly in his line of vision. He had never before been so near Dora
Milburn, and he had never before perce