"Yes," said Saltash, and he spoke with finality, even with a certain grimness.
Toby's face lighted up for a second, and then clouded again. She glanced at him doubtfully. "If Paris amuses you—" she ventured.
"Paris does not amuse me," said Saltash emphatically. "Have a cigarette, ma chère, while I go and dress."
"Can I help you dress?" said Toby, with a touch of wistfulness. "I have put everything ready."
His odd eyes flashed her a smile. "Not here, chérie, not now.
Perhaps—when we get on a yacht again—"
He was gone, leaving the sentence unfinished, leaving Toby looking after him with the wide eyes of one who sees at last a vision long desired. She stretched out both her arms as the door closed upon him and her lips repeated very softly the words that he had last uttered.
"Perhaps—when we got on a yacht again—"
When they went down to the great salle-à-manger a little later, her face was flushed and her smile ready, though she glanced about her in a shy, half-furtive fashion as they entered. They found a secluded table reserved for them in a corner, and her eyes expressed relief. She shrank into it as if she would make herself as small as possible. Again no one accosted them though a good many looked in their direction. Saltash was far too well known a figure to pass unnoticed in any fashionable crowd. But the general attention did not centre upon them. That was absorbed by a far greater attraction that night.
She sat at the end of the room like a queen holding her court, and beside her sat the Viking, stern-faced and remote of mien, as supremely isolated as though he sat with her on a desert island. He spoke but seldom, and then to her exclusively. But when he spoke, she turned to him the radiant face of the woman who holds within her grasp her heart's desire.
She was superbly dressed in many-shaded blue, and jewels sparkled with every breath she drew. Above her forehead, there nestled in the gold of her hair a single splendid diamond that burned like a multi-coloured flame. She was at the acme of her triumph that night. Of all who knew her, there was not one who had seen her thus. They watched her almost with bated breath. She was like a being from another world. She transcended every expectation of her.