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it’s all ear.’
Miss Bennett liked dancing and poetry better than
anything in the world. She danced well, but very, very
slowly, and an expression came into her eyes as though her
thoughts were far, far away. She talked breathlessly of the
floor and the heat and the supper. She said that the Portman
Rooms had the best floor in London and she always liked
the dances there; they were very select, and she couldn’t
bear dancing with all sorts of men you didn’t know any-
thing about; why, you might be exposing yourself to you
didn’t know what all. Nearly all the people danced very well,
and they enjoyed themselves. Sweat poured down their fac-
es, and the very high collars of the young men grew limp.
Philip looked on, and a greater depression seized him
than he remembered to have felt for a long time. He felt
intolerably alone. He did not go, because he was afraid to
seem supercilious, and he talked with the girls and laughed,
but in his heart was unhappiness. Miss Bennett asked him
if he had a girl.
‘No,’ he smiled.
‘Oh, well, there’s plenty to choose from here. And they’re
very nice respectable girls, some of them. I expect you’ll
have a girl before you’ve been here long.’
She looked at him very archly.
‘Meet ‘em ‘alf-way,’ said Mrs. Hodges. ‘That’s what I tell
him.’
It was nearly eleven o’clock, and the party broke up. Phil-
ip could not get to sleep. Like the others he kept his aching
feet outside the bed-clothes. He tried with all his might not

Of Human Bondage