Harry broke into a laugh, half of amusement, half of impatience. "You needn't look so infernally solemn over it! It won't kill her to bow to me—or even to shake hands."
Andy came to a sudden resolution. Since chance willed it this way, this way it should be.
"As you please!" he said, and rang the bell.
Harry rose to his feet, and took off the panama hat, which he had kept on during his talk with Andy. His eyes were bright; the smile flickered again on his lips. He had not seen Vivien since that night—and that night seemed a very long way off to Harry Belfield.
In the brief space before the door reopened, a vision danced before Andy's eyes—a vision of Curly the retriever, and of a girl standing motionless in fear, and yet, because he was there, not so much afraid. In his mind was the idea which had suddenly taken shape under the impulsion of chance—that she had better face the present than dream of the past, better see the man who was nothing to her, than pore over the memory of him who had been everything. She might—nay, probably would—resent an encounter thus sprung upon her. Andy knew it; in this moment, with the choice suddenly presented, he chose to act for himself. Perhaps, for once in his life, he yielded to a sort of superstition, a feeling that the chance was not for nothing, that they three would not meet together again without result. Mingled with this was anger that Harry should take the encounter with his airy lightness, that his eyes should be bright and his lips bent in a smile. Andy was ready for the last round of the fight—and ready to take his chance. Suddenly under the pressure of his thoughts—perforce, as it were—he spoke out to Harry.
"None of this has been of my seeking," he said.
"None of what? What do you mean, old fellow?"
There was no time for answer. Vivien was in the room, and the clerk closed the door after she had entered.
She stood for a moment on the threshold and then moved quickly to Andy's side.