CHAPTER XV
ALL FOUND
I had seen her but once before, and that was at the Savoy on New Year's Eve. She had been with her party at one table, and I with mine at another. And in the midst of the reveling I had chanced to look up and into one of the great mirrors which made a panel upon the wall. There I had seen the girl, sitting back in her chair, smiling and fresh and white-shouldered, in a dress of black and gold, her fingers about the stem of her goblet. Not talking, listening, rather, to the words of a man at her side, whose eyes were watching her smiling lips somewhat greedily. He had red hair, I remember, and a moustache brushed up to hide a long upper lip. And, as I looked, she also had looked up, and our eyes had met. There and then I had raised my wine and toasted her—her of the looking-glass. The smile had deepened. Then she had raised her glass, and drunk to me in return. That was all. And when Berry had leaned across the table and asked:
"Who's your friend?"
"I wish I knew."
"Pshaw!" said my brother-in-law. "I say it deliberately."
"I drank to a thought," said I. "Believe me." After all, a thought is a reflection. And now here she was, sitting in the grass by the wayside.
"She's brown, isn't she?" said I.
"As a berry. I like his breeches."