"DO stay a little. I always think this is
such a nice hour. One can really talk," Mrs. Churchley went on. The
Colonel laughed; he said it wasn't fair. But their hostess pressed
his daughter. "Do sit down; it's the only time to have any talk."
The girl saw her father sit down, but she wandered away, turning her
back and pretending to look at a picture. She was so far from
agreeing with Mrs. Churchley that it was an hour she particularly
disliked. She was conscious of the queerness, the shyness, in
London, of the gregarious flight of guests after a dinner, the
general sauve qui peut and panic fear of being left with the host and
hostess. But personally she always felt the contagion, always
conformed to the rush. Besides, she knew herself turn red now,
flushed with a conviction that had come over her and that she wished
not to show.
Her father sat down on one of the big sofas with Mrs. Churchley;
fortunately he was also a person with a presence that could hold its
own. Adela didn't care to sit and watch them while they made love,
as she crudely imaged it, and she cared still less to join in their
strange commerce. She wandered further away, went into another of
the bright "handsome," rather nude rooms--they were like women
dressed for a ball--where the displaced chairs, at awkward angles to
each other, seemed to retain the attitudes of bored talkers. Her
heart beat as she had seldom known it, but she continued to make a
pretence of looking at the pictures on the walls and the ornaments on
the tables, while she hoped that, as she preferred it, it would be
also the course her father would like best.
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