'I'm blown to pieces. I drove Cornish this morning; he got by everything on the way. He acted like a première danseuse when I passed the cooper's shop.'
His joy at seeing her was discountenanced by his fear for her; and he was afraid of her. Her insinuated trust in him threw into murky relief the affair which occupied him. When she turned to him a flushed, joyful face, and gray eyes clear and unsullied, it flashed into his soul, as formedly as a Mene Tekel, that she would unhesitatingly brush out of her life-path the dust of doubt; that equivocation and willingness to balance motives were no part of her. He knew that in her were no dim angles of cross-grained purpose, no shadowy intersections of the lines of good and evil.
'I say I'm blown to wisps; couldn't you find me a mirror, please?'
'What would I do with a mirror here? But see—'
He lifted the window sash, pulled in one shutter, and with a gesture of presentation, said, 'As others see us!'
She turned her back while she arranged her hair before the makeshift mirror. Relieved from her direct gaze, he stepped quickly to the stand, and looked into the crucible. There was no change. He had expected none, but he could not be sure. Maxineff himself could not be sure of this new mixture. A run of the same temperature might bring about the change he looked for as readily as an increase. The suspense was unbearable.
'Well, Cagliostro!' she called. 'You alchemists are capable of the utterest abstraction, aren't you?'
'Why have you come?' he said quickly, frowning at her.
'To take you driving,' with an enticing smile.
'Will you not go? Please, at once?'