It was a blind instinct, but she obeyed it without question. She had no
choice.
"Oh no!" she cried. "Oh no! I couldn't!" and wrested herself from him in
a panic.
He let her go, and she heard him laugh as she broke away. But she did not
wait for more. To linger was unthinkable. Urged by that imperative, inner
prompting she turned and fled, not pausing for a moment's thought.
The glass door closed behind her. She burst impetuously into the deserted
ballroom. And here, on the point of entering the small recess from which
she was escaping, she came suddenly face to face with Scott.
So headlong was her flight that she actually ran into him. He put out a
steadying hand.
"I was just coming to look for you," he said in his quiet, composed
fashion.
She stopped unwillingly. "Oh, were you? How kind! I--I think I ought to
go up now. It's getting late, isn't it? Good-night!"
He did not seek to detain her. She wondered with a burning sense of shame
what he could have thought of her wild rush. But she was too agitated to
attempt any excuse, too agitated to check her retreat. Without a backward
glance she hastened away like Cinderella overtaken by fate; the spell was
broken, the glamour gone.
CHAPTER VIII
MR. GREATHEART
It was a very meek and subdued Dinah who made her appearance in the
_salle-a-manger_ on the following morning.
She and Billy were generally in the best of spirits, and the room usually
rang with their young laughter.
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