urse in that great
hotel. You were thinking how you would love it if it were yours, and how
cruel it was that Love was sent without an object to waste itself upon.
You were: I saw it in your face."

She suddenly lifted her eyes and looked full into his with a look that
held and possessed him. For a moment his whole soul seemed to tremble
on the verge of their lustrous depths, and he drew back dizzy and
frightened. What he saw there he never clearly knew; but, whatever it
was, it seemed to suddenly change his relations to her, to the room, to
his wife, to the world without. It was a glimpse of a world of which
he knew nothing. He had looked frankly and admiringly into the eyes of
other pretty women; he had even gazed into her own before, but never
with this feeling. A sudden sense that what he had seen there he had
himself evoked, that it was an answer to some question he had scarcely
yet formulated, and that they were both now linked by an understanding
and consciousness that was irretrievable, came over him. He rose
awkwardly and went to the window. She rose also, but more leisurely and
easily, moved one of the books on the table, smoothed out her skirts,
and changed her seat to a little sofa. It is the woman who always comes
out of these crucial moments unruffled.

"I suppose you will be glad to see your friend Mr. Demorest when you
go back," she said pleasantly; "for of course he will be at Hymettus
awaiting you."

He turned eagerly, as he always did at the name. But even then he felt
that Demorest was no longer of such importance to him. He felt, too,
that he was not yet quite sure of his voice or even what to say. As he
hesitated she went on half playfully: "It seems hard that you had to
come all the way here on such a bootless errand. You haven't even seen
your wife yet."

The mention of his wife recalled him to himself, oddly enough, when
Demorest's name had failed. But very differently. Out of his whirling
consciousness came the instinctive feeling that he could not see her
now. He turned, crossed the room, sat down on the sofa beside Mrs.
Horncastle, and without, however, looking at her, said, with his eyes on
the floor, "No; and I've been thinking that it's hardly worth while to
disturb her so early to-morrow as I should have to go. So I think it's
a good deal better to let her have a good night's rest, remain here
quietly with you to-morrow until the stage leaves, and that both of you
come over together.