e boors, she moved into the
corridor.

At the end of the vista of red carpet and gas-jets rose the grand
staircase, and on the lowest stair stood Arthur Twemlow. She had begun
to traverse the corridor and she could not stop now, and fifty feet lay
between them.

'Oh!' her heart cried in the intolerable spasm of a swift and
mysterious convulsion. 'Why do you thus torture me?' Every step was an
agony.

He moved towards her, and she noticed that he was extremely pale. They
met. His hand found hers. Then it was that she perceived, with a
passionate gratitude, how heaven had been watching over her. If John had
not hesitated about coming, if her daughters had not deserted her in the
cloak-room, if the old doctor had not provided himself with a new supply
of naughty stories, if indeed everything had not occurred exactly as it
had occurred--she would have been forced to undergo in the presence of
witnesses the shock which she had just experienced; and she would have
died. She felt that in those seconds she had endured emotion to the last
limit of her capacity. She traced a providence even in Harry's chance
phrase, which had warned her and so broken the force of the stroke.

'Why, cruel one, did you play this trick on me? Can you not see what I
suffer!' It was her sad glittering eyes that reproachfully appealed to
him.

'Did I know what would happen?' his answered. 'Am I not equally a
victim?'

She smiled pensively, and her lips murmured: 'Well, wonders will never
cease.'

Such were the first words.

'I found I had to come back to London,' he was soon explaining. 'And I
met young Burgess at the Empire on Thursday night, and he told me about
this affair and gave me a ticket, and so I thought as I had been at the
opera I might as well----' He hesitated.

'Have you seen the girls?' she inquired.

He had not.

On the flower-bordered staircase her foot slipped; she felt like a
convalescent trying to walk after a long illness. Arthur with a silent
questioning gesture offered his arm.

'Yes, please,' she said, gladly. She wished not to say it, but she said
it, and the next instant he was supporting her up the steps. Anything
might happen now, she thought; the most impossible things might come to
pass.

At the top of the staircase they paused. They could hear the music
faintly through closed doors. They had the precious illusion of being
aloof, apart, separated from the world, sufficient to themselves and
gloriously