The two connecting rooms were full of people, and the air was heavy.
Through the haze she saw Graham, and nodded to him, but with a little
sinking of the heart. She was aware, however, that he was looking at her
with a curious intentness and a certain expectancy. Maybe he only hoped
she would let him dance with Toots.
"No, thanks," she said. "Sorry."
"Why not, Delight? Just a hand, anyhow."
"Three good reasons: I don't play cards on Sunday; I don't ever play for
money; and I'm stifling for breath already in this air."
She was, indeed, a little breathless.
There was, had she only seen it, relief in Graham's face. She did not
belong there, he felt. Delight was--well, she was different. He had
not been thinking of her before she came in; he forgot her promptly the
moment she went out. But she had given him, for an instant, a breath
of the fresh out-doors, and quietness and--perhaps something clean and
fine.
There was an insistent clamor that she stay, and Tommy Hale even got
down on his knees and made a quite impassioned appeal. But Delight's
chin was very high, although she smiled.
"You are all very nice," she said. "But I'm sure I'd bore you in a
minute, and I'm certain you'd bore me. Besides, I think you're quite
likely to be raided."
Which met with great applause.
But there was nothing of Delight of the high head when she got out of
her car and crept up the rectory steps. How could she even have cared?
How could she? That was his life, those were the people he chose to play
with. She had a sense of loss, rather than injury.
The rector, tapping at her door a little later, received the answer to
his note through a very narrow crack, and went away feeling that the way
of the wicked is indeed hard.
Clayton had been watching with growing concern Graham's intimacy
with the gay crowd that revolved around Marion Hayden. It was more
thoughtless than vicious; more pleasure-seeking than wicked; but its
influence was bad, and he knew it.
But he was very busy. At night he was too tired to confront the
inevitable wrangle with Natalie that any protest about Graham always
evoked, and he was anxious not to disturb the new rapprochement with the
boy by direct criticism.
The middle of December, which found the construction work at the new
plant well advanced, saw the social season definitely on, also, and he
found himself night after night going to dinners and then on to balls.
There were fewer private dances than in previous Winters, but society
had taken up various war activities and made them fashionable. The
result was great charity balls.