The wish was, perhaps, the result of fatigue. She was no sooner fully conscious of it than she rose to her feet.
"Shall we walk through the rooms now?" she said. "It's more than time for Eleanor to be here. Oh, I'm all right now, thank you"—she met his question smilingly. "I don't know what was the matter—it was very silly. You see I boasted unwisely about never thinking, since I have such foolish thoughts; but I won't again. Look, there is a picture of Gertrude Trevor. A good likeness, isn't it? But you've seen it before, perhaps?"
"No," said Gerard, absently. "I haven't seen any of them before." They walked on slowly through the rooms, and she did the honors, pointing out the pictures, as it was apparently his first visit. They did not seem to interest him greatly.
"Have you really never been here before?" she asked at length. She could not have explained what induced her to put the question.
He answered it absently. "Why, yes, every day"—and then suddenly stopped and turned his eyes full upon her, while that strange light gleamed in their sombre depths which she had surprised once or twice before and had interpreted many different ways, which now set her heart beating wildly, and made her wish her question unspoken. "Every day," he repeated, quietly, "about this time, or earlier, since—since the thing began."
"Then why—why"—The words died away on her lips. They had reached the head of the great staircase, and the crowd came streaming up, a confused mass, to which she paid no heed. She had again the feeling of being alone, quite alone, in the midst of it all, while involuntarily their eyes met, and his were all aglow with a fire which she had never before seen in them, or imagined; a fire that dazzled and bewildered, and filled her with a strange, unreasoning joy, as it burned away the barriers of doubt and indifference, till for one short, breathless moment, which she could have counted with her heart-beats she read his inmost soul.
"I only looked at one picture," he said.
And then with the words the spell which held her seemed broken, and the crowd closed in about her, with a sound like the roar of the sea very near at hand, and she looked down the great staircase, and saw Mrs. Bobby coming towards them.