you been hiding? I promised Oliver I would find
you for him. He says he came only to look at you."

The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded by the yellow
lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if they were seized by the
spirit of melody; and from the dusk of the trellis the ravished
sweetness of honeysuckle flooded the garden with fragrance. With the
vanished sadness in her heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in
the faces of the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer seemed
pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning sweetness of
fulfilment.

Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was conscious that he
was at her side, looking down at her beneath a lantern which was
beginning to flicker. A sense of deep peace--of perfect contentment with
the world as God planned it--took possession of her. Even the minutes of
suspense seemed good because they had brought at last this swift rush
of happiness. Every line of his face--of that face which had captured
her imagination as though it had been the face of her dreams--was
illumined by the quivering light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were
so close to hers that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and
she grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a height
and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance and fall. A
delicious stillness, which began in her brain and passed to her
throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a perfume. While she stood there
she was incapable of thought--except the one joyous thought that this
was the moment for which she had waited since the hour of her birth.
Never could she be the same afterwards! Never could she be unhappy again
in the future! For, like other mortals in other ecstatic instants, she
surrendered herself to the intoxicating illusion of their immortality.

After that silence, so charged with emotion for them both, it seemed
that when he spoke it must be to utter words that would enkindle the
world to beauty; but he said merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to
speak to you."

His look added, "I came because my longing had grown unbearable"; and
though she replied only to his words, it was his look that made the
honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft
stars, go round like coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted
away from her, and the distance between her and the whirling figures in
white muslin seemed greater