"Now I'm disappointed in you," Mrs. Jarrott said, with pretty reproachfulness. "You're not taking me seriously. Oh, I see, I see. You're just an ordinary man, after all; when I thought for a minute you might be—well, a little different. Do take some of that asparagus," she added in another tone. "It's simply delicious."
It was while he was helping himself to this delicacy that Miriam got the first clear view of his face, half turned as it was toward her. He seemed aware that she was observing him, for during the space of some seconds he held the silver implements idle in his hands, while he lifted his eyes to meet hers. The look they exchanged was significant and long, and yet she was never quite sure that she recognized him then. For the minute she was only conscious of a sudden, inward shock, to which she was unable to ascribe a cause. Something had happened, though she knew not what. Having in the course of a few minutes regained her self-control, she could only suppose that it was a repetition of that unreasoning panic which had now and then brought her to the verge of fainting, when by chance, in London, Paris, or New York, she caught a glimpse of some tall figure that carried her imagination back to the cabin in the Adirondacks. She had always thought that he might appear in some crowd and take her by surprise. She had never expected to find him in a gathering that could be called social. Still less had she looked to meet him like this, with Philip Wayne who had sentenced him to death not three feet away. The mere idea was preposterous. And yet—
She glanced at him again. He was listening attentively while Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott's voice ran on:
"People say our society has no traditions. It has traditions. It has the traditions of the country village, and it has never outgrown them. We're nothing but the country village writ large. New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore—we're the country village over again, with its narrowness its sets, its timidity, all writ so large that they hide anything like a real society from us. Now isn't it so, Mr. Strange? Don't be afraid to give me your frank opinion because that's what I'm asking for."
Miriam herself made an effort to seem to be doing something that would enable her to sit unnoticed. She was glad that Wayne was engaged by Mary Pole so that he could no longer listen to the voice that wakened his recollections. She looked again at the tall, carefully dressed man beside her, so different in all his externals from anything she imagined Norrie Ford could ever become. Norrie Ford was an outlaw and this was a man of the world. She felt herself being reassured—and yet disappointed. Her first feeling of faintness passed away, enabling her to face the situation with greater calm. Under cover of the energetic animation characteristic of every American dinner-party at which the guests are intimate, she had leisure to think over the one or two hints that were significant. Now and then a remark was addressed to her across the table to which she managed to return a reply sufficiently apt to give her the appearance of being in touch with what was going on around her; but in reality she was taking in the fact, with the spirit rather than the mind, that Norrie Ford had returned.
She never understood just how and when that assurance came to her. It was certainly not by actual recognition of his features, as it was not by putting together the few data that came under her observation. Thinking it over in after years, she could only say that she "just found herself knowing it." He was there—beside her. Of that she had no longer a doubt.
Her amazement did not develop all at once. Indeed, the position had an odd naturalness, like something in a dream. The element of impossibility in what had happened was so great that for the time being her mind refused to meet it. She was only aware of that vague sense of satisfaction, of inward peace, that comes when long-desired ends have been fulfilled.
The main fact being accepted, her outer faculties could respond to the call that a dinner-party makes on its least important member. When the conversation at her end of the table became general she took her part, and later engaged in a three-cornered discussion with Wayne and Mary Pole on the subject of an endowed theatre; but all the while her subconscious mind was struggling for a theory to account for Norrie Ford's presence in that particular room and in that unexpected company. The need of some immediate, plausible reason for so astounding an occurrence deadened her attention to the comparative quietness with which she accepted his coming—now that she had regained her self-control, although she was conscious of stirrings of wild joy in this evidence that he had been true to her. Had she recalled what she had said to him eight years ago as to the Argentine, and the "very good firm to work for," she would have had an easy clew, but that had passed from her mind almost with the utterance—certainly with his departure He had gone out into the world, leaving no more trace behind him than the bird that has flown southward. Not once during the intervening years did the thought cross her mind that words which she had spoken nearly at haphazard could have acted as a guide to him, while still less did she dream that they could have led him into the very seat beside her which he was occupying now.
Nevertheless, he was there, and for the present she could dispense with the knowledge of the adventures that had brought him. He was there, and that was the reason of his coming in itself. He had hewn his way through all difficulties to reach her—as Siegfried came to Brunhild, over the mountains and through the fire. He had found the means—both the means and the daring—to enter and make himself accepted in her own world, her own circle, her own family—in so far as she had a family—and to sit right down at her side.
She was not surprised at it. She assured herself of that. At the very instant when she was saying to Mary Pole, across Philip Wayne's white waistcoat, that she had always thought of endowed institutions of creative art as belonging to the races of weaker individual initiative—at the very instant when she was saying that, she was repeating to herself that the directness, the high-handedness, and the success of this kind of exploit was exactly what she would have expected of Norrie Ford. It was what she had expected of him—in one form or another. It was with a sense of inward pride that she remembered that her faith in him had never wavered, even though it was not until Conquest forced her that she had confessed the fact. She glanced at Conquest across the table now and caught his eye. He smiled at her and raised his glass, as though to drink to her health. She smiled in return, daringly, triumphantly, as she would not have ventured to do an hour ago. She could see him flush with pleasure—a rare occurrence—at her unusual graciousness, while she was only rejoicing in her escape from him. Under the shadow of the tall man beside her, who had achieved the impossible in order to be loyal to her, she felt for the first time in her life that she had found a shelter. It mattered nothing that he was engrossed with Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott, and that, after the one glance, he had not turned toward her again; she was sure he knew that she understood him, and that he recognized her power to wait in patience to have the mystery explained.