the night at the Palazzo Ugochini, they were entirely alone--for
the first time since the night at the Palazzo Ugochini they looked at
each other without the commentary of other eyes--without the atmosphere
of conventional things.

Involuntarily, inevitably, their eyes met. Clodagh looked into his; and
in the contact of glances it seemed that a miracle came to pass. By
power of that magnetism that indisputably exists--the magnetism that
draws certain natures irrevocably together, although circumstance and
time may delay their union--she saw the gleam of comprehension, of
question, of acknowledgment spring from his eyes to hers; and she knew,
without the need of words, that he stood within the circle of her
power, that--whether with, or against his will--his personality claimed
response from hers.

She did not move; for it seemed to her, in that instant of
understanding, that her life and his were mysteriously suspended. Her
heart beat extraordinarily fast, yet her mental vision was curiously
clear. By the light of her recent misgivings, by the light of her
sudden confidence she seemed to see and to read herself and him with a
strange and vivid clearness. Some power, tangible yet invincibly
compelling, drew them together. In the personal scheme of things there
were only two persons--he and she. Beyond the walls of the music-room
life swept forward as relentlessly, as rapidly as before; but inside
the walls of the music-room there were only he and she.

Almost unconsciously she took a step towards him.

"Do you remember that night in Venice?" she asked. "The night you said
all the things that sounded so hard, and hurt so much, and--and were so
true?"

She did not know why she had spoken. She did not know how she had
framed her words. She only knew that, exalted by the consciousness of
great good within her reach, she was moved to dare greatly.

It was the moment of her life. The moment when all social barriers of
prejudice and of etiquette fell away before a tremendous
self-knowledge. She realised in that space of time that her thoughts of
Gore--her attraction towards him--her reluctant admiration--had been
insensibly leading up to this instant of action; that on the evening
when they stood together on the terrace of the hotel at Venice, and
watched the night steal in from the lagoon, it had been irrevocably
written in the book of fate that they should one day look into each
other's hearts--for happiness or sorrow.