Half blinded by the glare, dazed and fascinated by the sights, the
sounds, the perfumes, he followed the footman down the hall.
He was obliged to skirt the room, even then hardly evading the dancers.
His progress was necessarily slow. The footman so continually paused to
apologize for having brushed against some lady in his anxiety to avoid
a whirling pair of dancers, that it began to seem to Maurice that they
should never reach Mrs. Wilson. He cast his eyes to the floor,
resolved not to look at the worldly sights around him. Country bred and
trained in the asceticism of the Clergy House, he could not see these
women without blushing; and more than ever he wondered that he had been
so blindly obedient as to allow himself to be brought to such a place.
He heard a man clap his hands. He looked up to see a flock of dancers
hurrying to the upper end of the room. Among them, with a shock so
violent that his heart seemed to stand still, he recognized Berenice
Morison. He saw her go to a table and pick up something; then she and
her companions turned and came glancing and gleaming down the hall like
a flock of pigeons which fly and shine in the sun.
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