“I am Rupert De Willoughby,” he said. “I beg pardon for disturbing you. It startled me to see you standing there. I came to see Mr. Thomas De Willoughby.”
It was a singular situation. Perhaps the moonlight had something to do with it; perhaps the spring. They stood and looked at each other quite simply, as if they did not know that they were strangers. A young dryad and faun meeting on a hilltop or in a forest’s depths by moonlight might have looked at each other with just such clear, unstartled eyes, and with just such pleasure in each other’s beauty. For, of a truth, each one was thinking the same thing, innocently and with a sudden gladness.
As he had come up the garden-path, Rupert had seen a vision and had stopped unconsciously that instant. And Sheba, looking down, had seen a vision too—a beautiful face as young as her own, and with eyes that glowed.
“You don’t know what you looked like standing there,” said Rupert, as simply as the young faun might have spoken. “It was as if you were a spirit. The flowers in your hair looked like great white stars.”
“Did they?” she said, and stood and softly gazed at him.
How the boy looked up at her young loveliness! He had never so looked at any woman before. And then a thought detached itself from the mists of memory and he seemed to remember.
“Are you Sheba?” he asked.
“Yes, I am Sheba,” she answered, rather slowly. “And I remember you, too. You are the boy.”
He drew nearer to the balcony, laying his hand upon the multiflora rose creeper.
“Yes, yes,” he said, almost tremulous with eagerness. “You bring it all back. You were a little child, and I——”