As Frank returned the grip he looked over Nick's shoulder to a merry group which stood near the entrance to the music-room, and his amazed eyes rested upon Katrine Dulany. A new Katrine, yet still the old. She wore white lace. Her black hair was parted and rippled over the ears into a low coil. There was even more the look of an August peach to her than he remembered: dusky pink with decided yellow in the curve of her chin, as he had once laughingly asserted. But the softness and uplifted expression of the misty blue eyes were the same,
and added to all was the repose of manner which comes only from the consciousness of power or of sorrows lived beyond.
For a moment he seemed unable to make any effort to go to her, and then came to him an intense consciousness of himself, of her, and their mutual past. As their eyes met, however, he discovered that whatever embarrassment existed was his own, for Katrine saw him, seemed to make sure that her eyes did not deceive her, and with a glad smile stretched both hands toward him.
"Why, it's Mr. Ravenel!" she cried.
Her eyes rested in his as she spoke. "It has been three, oh, so many years, since we have met," she began, with a smile.
"Don't," he answered, holding her hands. "It was only yesterday."
"Three yesterdays," she said, with the old "make-believe" look in her eyes. "Half a week. Somehow it seems longer, doesn't it?"
"I was sorry to miss seeing you in Paris last May," Frank said. "I wanted so much to congratulate you; but congratulations would have been an old story even at that time."
"Everything was in such a ferment the night you called," she explained. "Josef was quite
beside himself, and I was rushing off somewhere, I remember, and I didn't get the card until afterward," again the perfectly frank, sweet look, "but I recall that it gave me pleasure to know you came."