" The girl who had sat at Lee's right
was dancing with a tall fair-haired boy in a corner. Entirely oblivious
of the rest of the room, they were advancing two matched steps and then
retreating, their eyes tightly shut and cheeks together. A man fell in
the middle of the floor, catching his partner's skirt and tearing it
from the waistband. Everywhere the mad effort at escape!
Lee Randon lost his impression of the triviality of the occasion: they
all seemed desperately searching for that something he had lost and
which was overwhelmingly important to him; and all the while the music
stuttered and mocked and confused a tragic need. Or it was like a
momentary release from deadly confinement, a respite that, by its rare
intoxication, drove the participants into forms of incredulous cramped
abandon. Positively, he thought, they were grasping at light, at color,
at the commonplace sounds of a few instruments, as though they were
incalculable treasures. Alice, when she danced, held her head back with
eyes half closed; and suddenly, with her mouth a little parted, she,
too, had a look of Cytherea, a flash of the withheld beauty which
filled him with restlessness.
It startled him, and, sub-consciously, his arm tightened about her. She
responded immediately, with an accelerated breath, and the resemblance
was gone. Greatly to his relief, a man cut in on them, and once more he
found himself dancing with Anette.
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