Molly and Edmund rose.

He stood where they left him watching her whirl
past.  It was as he had suspected; she had the gift of perfect movement.

And Molly, as she danced past, glanced towards the tall, loose figure, dignified with all its carelessness and with some curious trick of distinction and indifference in its bearing, and twice she caught tired eyes looking very earnestly at her.

“Good Heavens!  I was talking of Rose to that girl, and of my efforts to get at her mother’s money, and I never speak of either to mortal man.  What made me do it?”

Slowly he turned away and left the ballroom and the house, declining with a wave of the hand various appeals to stay, and found himself in the street.

“Sympathies and affinities be hanged!” He said it aloud.  “She isn’t even really beautiful, and I’ll be hanged, too, if I’ll talk to her any more.”

But, alack for Molly, he did talk to her on almost every occasion on which they met.  It was from no conscious lack of royalty to Rose; it was largely because he was so full of her and her affairs that he would in an assembly of indifferent people drift towards one who was in any way connected with those affairs.  Then one word or two, the merest “how d’ye do?” seemed to develop instantly into talk, and shortly the talk turned to intimate things.  And for him Molly was always at her best.  Many people did not like her, yet admired her, and admitted her into their houses half unwillingly.  Her speech was not often kindly, and there was an element of defiance even in her quietness, for her unmistakable social ease was distinctly negative.  Molly was rich and dressed well, and Mrs. Delaport Green was a very clever woman, whose blunders were rare and whose pet vice was not unfashionable.  There was nothing in this life to soften and ripen the best side of Molly.  But Edmund drew out whatever she had in her that was gentle and kindly.

It does not need the experience of many London seasons in order to realise that it is a condition of things in which many of the faculties of our nature are suspended.  It is not as a Puritan moralist might put it, that the atmosphere of a whirlpool of carnal vice chokes higher things, for the amusements may be perfectly innocent.  Only for a time the people who are engaged in them don’t happen to think, or to pity, or to pray, or to condemn, or often, I believe, to love, though it may seem absurd to say so.  It may, therefore, be called a rest cure for aspirations and higher ambitions and anxieties and all the nobler discontents.  To Molly it was youth and fun and brightness and forgetfulness.  There was no leisure to be morbid, no occasion to be bitter or combative.  The game of life was too bright and smooth, above all too incessant not to suffice.