There Will Come A Stranger by Dorothy Rivers Page B

John took, Vivian ’ s hand and held it for a moment.
    “Good night,” he said. “Good-bye, too—I shall be gone to-morrow while you ’ re still asleep.”
    “Good-bye. We ’ ll miss you, Valerie and I! You ’ ve been so kind. I hope we ’ ll meet again, some day!”
    “I hope so, too.”
    But if he had really meant it, Vivian reflected on her way upstairs, he would have asked for her address: and since he hadn ’ t, it was most improbable that they would ever meet again.
    She went to bed, oppressed by a flat sense of anti-climax.
    Nearly twelve already! thought Valerie, her eyes on the clock high on the wall above the band. Only one more dance, and it will be over. And I ’ ve scarcely danced with Rory all the evening ...
    Her flagging spirits must have made her feet flag too, for Robin ’ s arm tightened about her and he asked “Tired?”
    She pulled herself together. “Not a bit! I can ’ t think how it is that one never does seem to be tired here, taking all the exercise we do!”
    “Enjoying oneself is never tiring,” Robin told her sagely. “Look—d ’ you mind if I leave you just for a moment? Ronnie Barsham looks as though he ’ s going off, and I must have a word with him about to-morrow.”
    “Of course—do go!”
    Robin left her at their table and hurried after the departing Ronnie. Valerie thought how nice it was, just for a moment, to sit peacefully looking on, without the need to talk to anyone, or listen. There were eight of them in Rory ’ s farewell party: Hilary and Gordon Frayne, Robin and the man they all called Buster, whose real name she had never discovered, a girl with red hair and green eyes and a sharp, amusing tongue who came from Kerry and was in consequence nicknamed Blarney, a pretty brown-haired girl whose name was Pamela, Rory himself, and Valerie.
    For the last fortnight they had all been seeing a good deal of one another, since by mutual consent they had drifted into an elastic group. By day they split up into twos and threes, but of an evening they would foregather at one or other of the hotels or pensions where they were scattered, to play rummy or canasta, or dance to the wireless or a gramophone. When Vivian and Valerie had graduated from the nursery slopes to venture farther afield, taking a sandwich lunch from the hotel to save their precious currency and eating it in the hot sunshine high in the silence of the dazzling snows, Blarney and Pamela, and sometimes Robin and Buster, had joined up with them. Only Hilary, an expert skier despite her glamorously feminine appearance, disdained the company of the other girls and went off with the men on longer expeditions.
    Unenviously Valerie thought how marvellous it must be to do everything so well, and look so lovely into the bargain. According to her brother, Hilary ’ s tennis was up to Wimbledon standard, and her handicap at golf was four. She had travelled, it appeared, all over Europe and America as well, and judging by her conversation her circle of acquaintances was composed chiefly of people who were internationally famous in the worlds of politics and literature, music and art and sport. Her vivid personality made her the centre of every gathering. In Hilary ’ s company, Valerie felt as though she were a candle whose light had been pleasant enough until the switching on of a hundred watt electric light bulb had made it all but invisible.
    Hilary was dancing now with Rory. They were the most striking couple in the room, well matched for height and dark good looks, superbly poised, pivoting, gliding, eddying, whirling as though they were a single entity borne on the current of the music. Hilary was talking with her usual animation. From time to time Rory joined in. With Valerie he seemed to prefer to dance for the most part in silence. Probably, she thought, that ’ s because I don ’ t dance as well as Hilary: with me he has to concentrate on what he ’ s doing.
    Robin was taking longer than she had