"Les voici!" cried François, dropping into his native tongue in his excitement.
He threw open the wide doors and the next instant Ray ran up the steps. Helen, weak and dizzy from nervous tension, feeling as if she were about to faint, met her on the threshold.
"Kenneth!" she gasped. "Is he all right?"
"Certainly—he's fine. He's a little tired and nervous after the long journey, and the blue spectacles he wears make him look different, but he's all right."
The wife looked searchingly, eagerly at the young girl's face, as if seeking to read there what she dreaded to ask, and it seemed to her that the customary ring of sincerity was lacking in her sister's voice.
"Where is he—why isn't he with you?'
"Here he is now—don't you see him?"
Helen looked out. There came the tall, familiar figure she knew so well, the square shoulders, the thick bushy hair, with its single white lock so strangely isolated among the brown. Her heart fell as she saw the blue glasses. They veiled from her view those dear blue eyes, so kind and true. They made him look different. But what did she care as long as he had come home to her? Even with the horrid glasses, that dear form she would know in a thousand!
Slowly he came up the long flight of stone steps, weighted down by traveling rugs and handbag, both of which he refused to surrender to the obsequious François. Eagerly she rushed down the steps to meet him, her eyes half-closed, ready to swoon from excitement and joy. Nothing was said. He opened his arms. She put up her mouth, tenderly, submissively. For a moment he seemed to hesitate. He held her tight in his embrace, and just looked down at her. Then, as he felt the warmth of her soft, yielding body next to his, and saw the partly opened mouth, ready to receive his kiss, he bent down and fastened his lips on hers.