His memory of her as he had seen her yesterday at Versailles was very vivid. It was only a glimpse, but in that instant he had drunk in greedily the marvellous perfection of her beauty; and the picture had dwelt with him since. Sleeping and waking he could see the bronze dusk of her hair, the gentleness of her eyes, the softly flushed curve of her cheek, the tender sympathy of her mouth, the supple grace of her figure. The portrait was not new to him, to be sure—he had many times revelled in fond contemplation of those rare features—but absence had its usual effect, and it had been centuries, it seemed, since his vision had been so blessed. Against the dull, dun, grimy background of the railway station this radiant reflection was projected, clear and sharp. He saw her mentally just as he had seen her physically on the previous afternoon.
And as he gazed a miracle was wrought. For into and out of the image came and grew the reality, and he suddenly realised that she was standing before him, that in one hand he was holding his hat and that his other hand was clasping hers. All the sights and sounds of the platform died away, and he saw only her, more beautiful even than he had dreamed, her eyes alight with love, her lips smiling forgiveness.
O’Hara and the Fräulein had passed on, and he and the one woman in the world had drawn aside out of the hurry and scurry. A few steps away stood Marcelle, the maid, her interest decorously diverted.
“Oh, how good you are!” Grey was saying, his heart in his voice; “how very, very good you are!”
Her hand answered the ardent pressure of his.
“I just couldn’t let you go without seeing you,” she returned. “You cannot imagine what I have suffered. I tried to be brave—I tried so hard, dear; but I’m only a weak woman and my soul longed for you every minute.”
What bliss it was to hear her speak! It set the man’s pulses surging. His face was flushed and young and happy again, as it had not been since his awakening.
“The whole thing has been frightful,” he told her, clenching his teeth at the recollection. “You haven’t an idea what a net of circumstance has been thrown around me.”
“Yes,” she hastened, “I know—they told me you had been ill, irresponsible; that you had had brain fever or something, and—oh, Carey, why did you do that?” and she pointed to his beard.