TWO:The dance was becoming more of a rout. Hats fell back, even Naomi's heather-coloured bonnet became disorderly. Kerchiefs were crumpled and necks bare. Arms grew tighter, there were few merely clasping hands now. Then a lad kissed his partner on the neck while they danced, and soon another couple were spinning round with lips clinging together. The girls' hair grew rough and blew in their boys' eyesthere were sounds of pantingof kissingNaomi grew giddy, round her was a whirl of colour, hands, faces, the dusk and flaring lights. She clung closer to Reuben, and his arms tightened about her.Of late he had resumed his visits to Cheat Land, discontinued for a while at Tilly's marriage. The attraction of Alice Jury was as strong, unfathomable, and unaccountable as ever. Since the stormy interview after Richard's desertion they had not discussed his ambitions[Pg 238] for Odiam and Boarzell, but that meeting was none the less stamped on Reuben's memory with a gloomy significance. It was not that Alice's arguments had affected him at allshe had not penetrated to the springs of his enterprise, she had not touched or conjured the hidden part of him in which his ambition's roots were twined round all that was vital and sacred in the man. But somehow she had expressed her own attitude with an almost sinister clearness"It's I who am fighting Boarzell." What should she fight it for?imagine that she fought it, rather, for a woman could not really fight Boarzell. She was fighting it for him. She wanted him.
