She opened her door, and stood there staring into the twilit room, her slim grace outlined against the golden rain of falling leaves outside. Stefan Nikolai gazed at her over the top of the piano with a quiet smile of welcome, and finished his song. Joan burst into tears.
Had Archie been there, he would have rushed to the rescue, comforting, exclaiming, asking questions; and these methods failing, he would have called anxiously upon Ellen and the bottle of valerian.
But Archie was not there.... Nikolai went on playing softly, until the tears had spent themselves. Then he said as if they had parted yesterday: "I came to see why you no longer write to me, my dear. Is it because you are too happy?"
Joan began feverishly to light lamps and candles. "You must think me a f-fool, Stefan!" She was dabbing at her eyes. "It's just—Mother used to sing that song, you know."
"I know. She learned it from me when you were very little—One is never a fool to weep, Joan. It is only the fools who do not weep."
"Now," she cried, turning in the lamplight. "Stand there and let me look at you!"
He stood where she bade him, a slim, erect, very distinguished figure in foreign-cut clothes, with a rather Mephistophelian close clipped beard, and singularly black eyes, eloquent in an otherwise impassive face. They met her gaze now so tenderly, so caressingly, that something seemed to melt in her heart which had long been pent there. She held out both hands.
"Ob, Stefan, Stefan! I am so glad!—And how handsome you are! I had forgotten that."
He laughed a little, and bent over her hands, kissing them lightly.
"Why, you've never been so formal as that before!"