It seemed, too, as the morning advanced, that he had no intention of coming to her this day either.
But if such a thought occurred to her it was soon proved to be an unworthy one, for he came to her shortly after noon.
She was sitting in the room where he had said his good-bye to her long ago. She heard a step on the gravel of the drive and knew it at once. In a moment all the dreary years had slipped away from her like a useless garment. Once more she felt like that shy girl who had listened in dreadful secrecy and with a beating heart for the coming of her hero—her lover. She felt now as she had felt then—trembling with joyous anticipation, not without a tinge of maidenly fear.
She buried her face in her hands, saying in a whisper:
“Thank God—thank God—thank God!”
And then he entered the room.
CHAPTER XIII
She had feared, ever since she had been thinking of his return, that she would not be able to restrain her tears when they should be together. The very thought of meeting him had made her weep; but now when she turned her head and saw the tall man with the complexion of mahogany and the hands of teak—with the lean face and the iron-grey hair, she did not feel in the least inclined to weep—on the contrary, she gave a laugh. The change in his face did not seem to her anything to weep about; she had often during the previous three months tried to fancy what he would be like; and it actually struck her as rather amusing to find that he bore no resemblance whatsoever to the picture she had formed in her mind of the man who had lived for several years the life of a savage.