“No, I don’t think so.”
“But weren’t you going to the Rocky Mountains? Haven’t you brought back any bears?” said Amethyst.
She was of course obliged to say something, and her manner grew easier as the light slowly faded out of her face.
Here Mr Carisbrooke claimed Lucian’s acquaintance, and a few courtesies passed. Sylvester wondered what next. Even Lucian could hardly go down on his knees under the chandelier. He spoke a few needful words, but Sylvester, rather to his surprise, saw that he had turned conspicuously pale. He barely waited till the bystanders were not absolutely looking and listening, then said abruptly—
“May I speak to you?”
She hesitated a moment, and then skilfully moved a little away into the window, with a few light words about the lovely night which gave him a chance to follow, while Sylvester dashed at Sir Richard, and told him that he considered the leader of his political party a drag on the wheels of progress, and likely at the same time to plunge the country into anarchy.
Lucian and Amethyst stood in the open window. The trees in the square were motionless as pictures in the utter stillness of a London summer night, the flowers on the balcony were colourless in a flood of moonlight. There was a great silence, in which the roar of the traffic was but as the roar of the sea.
“Amethyst,” said Lucian, “can you forgive me? I was wrong.”
“Oh yes,” said Amethyst, “I have long known that you could not help it.”
“Of course,” he said, “I have always loved you exactly the same. Nothing could change that, I want you to understand at once that I am just the same. Will you go back?”