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Gwen was enjoying herself very much with the pick of the partners, Beata and Romola floated by together, and Clive was carefully performing his steps in company with a much amused married lady. Mavis acted wallflower for several dances, feeling considerably out of it, till Bevis's voice sounded suddenly in her ear. "Why, here you are! I've been looking for you everywhere!
Bevis's image stood in that already distant past like a lay figure, the mere semblance of a man. And with such conception of him his letter corresponded; it was artificial, lifeless, as if extracted from some vapid novel. But she must no destroy it. Its use was still to come. Letter and envelope must go back again into hiding, and await the day which would give them power over human lives.
For this woman whom she heard just above might perchance be one of Bevis's sisters, returned to London for some purpose or other, and in that case she preferred being seen at Barfoot's door to detection as she made for her lover's. Uncertainty on this point lasted but a few seconds. Dreading to look at the woman, Monica yet did so, just as she passed, and beheld the face of a perfect stranger.
Yet why might she not have been in Bevis's flat when he himself was absent? Suppose her an intimate to whom he had entrusted a latch-key. If any such connection existed, might it not help to explain Bevis's half-heartedness? To think thus was courting madness.
The butterfly, frightened at the shouting and Bevis's resolution, rose over the brambles, and Bevis stopping short flung his hat at him. The hat did not hit the butterfly, but the wind it made puffed him round, and so frightened him, that he flew up half as high as the elms, and went into the next field. When Bevis looked down, there was his hat, hung on a branch of ash, far beyond his reach.
Bevis's bird-photography, and especially his cinema camera, was highly appreciated, particularly by the younger members of the party, who persistently tried to track him and follow him, greatly to his embarrassment, for their presence frightened the birds away and defeated the very object for which he had gone out.
A young and good-looking face, however. Her mind, sufficiently tumultuous, received a new impulse of disturbance. Had this woman come forth from Bevis's fiat or from the one opposite? for on each floor there were two dwellings. In the meantime no one answered her knock. Mr. Barfoot had gone; she breathed thankfully. Now she might venture to ascend to the next floor.
When he stole away from the wood-pile, after escaping from the trap, he made up the field towards the copse, but upon reflection he determined to abandon his lair in the hollow elm, for he had so abused Bevis's good-nature that he doubted whether Bevis might not attack him even there despite the squirrel.
When she reached the building all but delirium possessed her. She had hurried up to the first landing, when a footstep behind drew her attention. It was a man in mechanic's dress, coming up with head bent, doubtless for some task or other in one of the flats. Perhaps he was going to Bevis's. She went forward more slowly, and on the next landing allowed the man to pass her.
"Nay, then," said the supposed Louis, "I must find some other reason, for I cannot allow Sir Bevis's resentment to rest upon national antipathy.
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