"In Paris, then, Electra," he said awkwardly.
Her brows contracted. She remembered the other tryst that was to have been, and could not answer.
"You will let me know where you are. I shall find you," Peter said, as he went down the steps, "at once."
But as he walked away, he knew it would have to be some incredible chance to bring them together. There was no room for him.
Electra sat there, her feet together, her hands in her lap, like a carven image, and held herself still in her dream of fantasy. She hardly knew where she was in these days. This was not the world as she had known it. Bound beyond bound of possibility lay over its horizon. There had been her former world, full of disappointments, lacking in opportunities for picturesque morals, and Markham MacLeod had walked into it, and turned on a light under which the whole place glittered. He had caused things to be forever different. One such illumination made all things possible. She felt like an adventurer setting sail. There in the room where he had talked to her, she sat and thought of him and even felt him near. The great stories flashed out before her, as if she turned page after page. Dante—how many times did he see Beatrice? She must look that up. But once would be enough, once for souls to recognize each other and then be forever faithful. At a step in the hall she recalled herself. It seemed as if everybody interrupted her in her passionate musings. This was Madam Fulton, and Electra remembered she had something to say to her. Madam Fulton looked very tired and irked in some way, as if she found the daily burden hard to bear. Electra rose, and waited scrupulously for her to sit.
"Billy Stark comes back to-morrow," said Madam Fulton. She took a chair, and laid her head back wearily.
"When does he sail?"
"Next week. You go Wednesday. He goes Saturday."
Electra dared not remind her of that wild threat of marrying Billy Stark and sailing with him. Her grandmother looked a pathetically old woman, and such fantasy seemed to have withdrawn into its own place.
"Grandmother," she began delicately. She had a fear of disturbing something frail that might fall to pieces of its own weakness.