He was dancing quite perfectly, but mechanically, like a man in a dream, and though he must have heard the music, he did not hear her when she spoke to him, but looked straight before him as if he were entirely absorbed in some thought.
When they came, in the course of the dance, to one of the doors, she stopped suddenly.
"Do you mind?
It is so hot," she murmured.
"N--o," he said, as if awaking suddenly.

"Let us go outside." He caught up a fur cloak that was lying on a bench, and disregarding her laughing remonstrance that the thing did not belong to her, he put it round her and led her on to the terrace.

She looked up at him just as they were passing out of the stream of light, saw how set and hard his face was, how straight the lips and sombre the eyes, and her hand, as it rested lightly on his arm, quivered like a leaf in autumn.

When they had got into the open air, he threw back his head and drew a long breath.
"Yes; it was hot in there," he said.
They walked slowly up and down for a minute, passing and repassing similar couples; then suddenly, as if the presence of others, the sound of their voices and laughter, jarred upon him, Stafford said: "Shall we go into the garden?
It is quiet there--and I want to speak to you." "If you like," she said, in a low voice, which she tried to make as languid as usual; but her heart began to beat fiercely and her lips trembled, and he might have heard her breath coming quickly had he not been absorbed in his own reflections.
They went down the steps and into the semi-darkness of the beautiful garden.

The silence was broken by the hum of the distant voices and the splashing of a fountain which reflected the electric light as the spray rose and fell with rhythmic regularity.