His father went on insufferably, without end.  Howat withdrew stiffly from the other’s touch.  Irresistibly he drifted back, back to Ludowika.  She had not moved; her bent hand seemed dislocated.  An immense tenderness for her overwhelmed him; his sheer passion vapourized into a poignant sweetness of solicitous feeling.  He was protective; his jaw set rigidly, he enveloped her in an angry barrier from all the world.  He had a sensation of standing at bay; in his mulberry damask, in brocade and silver buttons, he had an impression of himself stooped and savage, confronting a menacing dark with Ludowika flung behind him.  Inexplicable tremors assailed him, vast fears.  His father’s deliberate voice destroyed the illusion; he saw the candles about him like white and yellow flowers, the suave interior.  The others had returned.  He heard Ludowika speaking; she laughed.  His tension relaxed.  Suddenly he was flooded with happiness, as if he had been drenched in sparkling, delightful water.  He joined in the gay, trivial clamour that arose.  Isabel Penny gazed at him speculatively.

There would, it appeared, be no other opportunity that evening for him to declare himself to Ludowika.  He was vaguely conscious of his mother’s scrutiny; he must avoid exposing Ludowika to any uncomfortable surmising.  His thoughts leaped forward to a revelation that he began to feel was inevitable; he got even now a tangible pleasure from the consideration of an announcement of his passion for Ludowika Winscombe, a sheer insistence upon it in the face of an antagonistic world.  But for the present he must be careful.  This, the greatest event that had befallen him, summed up all that he innately was; it expressed him, a black Penny, absolutely; Howat felt the distance between himself, his convictions, and the convictions of the world, immeasurably widening.  His feeling for Ludowika symbolized his isolation from the interwoven fabric of the plane of society; it gave at last a tangible bulk to his scorn.

As he had feared, presently she rose and went to her room.  Myrtle took her place on the sofa.  Gilbert Penny vanished with a broad witticism at the well known preference of youth, in certain situations, for its own council.  David Forsythe made a wry face at Howat.  Caroline gaily laid her arm across her mother’s shoulder and propelled her from the room.  David stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor; and Howat, hardly less clumsy, took his departure.  He found Caroline awaiting him in the shadow of his door; she followed him and stood silent while he made a light.  Her face was serious, and her hands clasped tightly.  “Howat,” she said in a small voice, “it’s—­it’s, that is, David loves me.  Whatever do you suppose father and Myrtle will say?”