He seemed miles away from her, separated by some imponderable yet impassable barrier.
The first time her gaze had rested on him at the charity ball she had thought impetuously, "Any girl could fall in love with a man like that!" and she had carelessly asked his name of the assiduous Gershom, who appeared to her to exist in innumerable reflections of himself.

The next day when she had seen Stephen approaching her in the Square, she had obeyed the same erratic impulse, half in jest and half from the gambler's instinct to grasp at reluctant opportunity.

After all, had not experience taught her that one must venture in order to win, that nothing came to those who dared not stake the whole of life on the next turn of fortune?
She had been startled out of her composure by the sight of Stephen at the dinner; and yet she had not been conscious of any particular wish to see him again, or to sit at his side through two hours of embarrassment and uncertainty.

Now, on the way home, she was suffering acutely from the burden of failure, from the smarting realization of her own ignorance and awkwardness.

Her one bitter-sweet consolation was the knowledge that she had been "a good loser," that she had carried off her humiliation with a scornful pride which must have blighted like frost any tenderly budding shoots of compassion.