breast:
anachronisms reconciled by the witchery of the dance. And when Sally
darted across and down the steps she found the lawns, the terrace, and
the formal garden, too, peopled with paired shadows, murmurous with
soft voices and low-pitched laughter.

And she who quartered so swiftly and so diligently that maze of lights
and shadows found nowhere the one she wanted, but everywhere the
confirmation of her secret thought--that there was no place here for
her, no room, no welcome. On every hand love lurked, lingered,
languished, but not for her. Whichever way she turned she saw some
lover searching for his mistress, but not for her. They crossed her
path and paused and stared, sometimes they spoke and looked deep into
her eyes and harkened to the voice with which she answered them,
giving back jest for jest--and they muttered excuses and hurried on;
she was never for them.

It was as if life and fate conspired to humble her spirit and prove
her ambitious of place beyond her worth; to persuade her that she was
by birth, and must resign herself to remain always, Nobody.

Forlornly haunted, she circled back to the house, and on impulse
sought again the boudoir door.

Marie answered, but shook her head; no, she could not say where Mrs.
Gosnold might be found.

Impulse again took her out by the door to the drive. Motors were still
arriving and departing, to return at a designated hour, but here, at
what might be termed the back of Gosnold House--if that mansion could
be said to have either back or front--here on the landward side was
little light or noise or movement. And after an undecided moment on
the steps beneath the porte-cochere the Quakeress stepped down and out
into the blackness of the shadow cast by the western wing, a
deep shadow, dense and wide from the pale wall of the house to the
edge of the moon-pale lawn.

She moved slowly on through this pleasant space of semi-darkness,
footfalls muffled by the close-trimmed turf, her emotions calming a
little from the agitation which had been waxing ever more high and
strong in her with each successive crisis of the night. Here the
breeze was warm and bland, the music and the laughter a remote rumour,
stars glimmered in a dome of lapis lazuli; peace was to be distilled
of such things by the contemplative mind, peace and a sweet, sad sense
of the beauty and pain of life. No place more fit than this could one
wish wherein to shelter and to nurse bruised illusions.