I tapped an old-fashioned knocker upon a low green door. An elderly maid appeared. I saw by the bleak glint of a pale eye that she meant to say, "Not at home," and hastened to forestall her.
"See if Captain Lorillard is in, and if so tell him that Princess di Miramare has come from town on purpose for a talk with him," I flung in the stolid face.
There was no answer to that except obedience! The woman left me waiting in a delightful little square hall furnished with a very few, very beautiful, old things. And in a minute Robert Lorillard almost bounded out of a room into which the maid had vanished.
It was the first time we had seen each other since the day he married June Dana.
I had sat down on a cushioned chest in the hall. At sight of him I jumped up, and meaning to hold out a hand, found myself holding out two! He took both, pressed them, and without speaking we looked long at each other. For both of us the past had come alive.
He was the same, yet not the same. Certainly not less handsome, but changed, as all men who have been through the war are changed—anyhow, imaginative men. Though he had been back from the Front for over a year (he was invalided out after his last wound, just before the Armistice) the tan wasn't off his face yet, perhaps never would be. There were a few lines round his eyes and a few silver threads in his black hair. He smiled at me; but it was the smile of a man who has suffered, and known a hell of loneliness.
It was Robert who spoke first, saying entirely commonplace things in the beautiful voice that used to thrill London. He was so glad to see me! How nice it was of me to come! Then, suddenly, he remembered something. I could see him remembering. He remembered that he was supposed to be away.
"I ought to be in France," he said. "All my arrangements are made to go. Yet I haven't got off. I'm glad now that I haven't."
"So am I, very glad," I echoed. "I should have been too disappointed! But—I felt you wouldn't be gone."
He looked somewhat startled.