"Yes."
"It struck you as unusual?"
"I cannot say more than that. I knew by the light it was unusual. Then it moved—talking to Povey or Kempster or someone—and I realized in a flash who it was. I knew it must be your friend, the man you had promised to bring—Ju——"
"And then——?" he asked quickly, before she could pronounce the name.
"And then——"
She stopped, and her eyes looked away from him, not in the sense that they moved but that their focus changed as though she looked at something else, at something within herself, no longer, therefore, at the face in front of her. He waited; he understood that she was searching among deep, strange, seething memories; he let her search; and, watching closely, he presently saw the sight return into her eyes from its inward plunge.
"And when you knew who it was," he asked very quietly, "were you still surprised? Did he look as you expected him to look, for instance?"
"I had expected nothing, you see, Edward, because I had not been consciously thinking about his coming. No mental picture was present in me at all. But the moment I realized who it was, the light seemed to go—I just saw a young man standing there, with his head turned sideways to me. The light, I suppose, lasted for a second only—that first second. As to how he looked? Well, he looked, not only bigger—he is bigger than most men," she went on, "but he looked"—her voice hushed instinctively a little on the adjective—"different."
Her companion made a gesture of agreement, waiting in silence for what was to follow.
"He looked so extraordinary, so wonderful," she resumed, gazing steadily into his eyes, "that I—I can hardly put it into words, Edward, unless I use childish language." She broke off and sighed, and something, he fancied, in her wavered for a second, though it was certainly neither the voice nor the eyes. A faint trembling again perhaps ran through her body. Her account was so deliberately truthful that it impressed him more than he quite understood. He was aware of pathos in her, of some vague trouble very poignant yet inexplicable. A breath of awe, it seemed, entered the room and moved between them.