She leaned forward in her chair, the better to watch the changing expression in his eyes as she progressed with her story. Her hands were clenched tightly under the table's edge.
“You are looking into my eyes, as you have looked a hundred times,” she said after a moment. “There is something in them that has puzzled you since the night when you looked into them across that great ballroom in London. You have always felt that they were not new to you, that you have had them constantly in front of you for ages. Do you remember when you first saw me, James Brood?”
He stared, and his eyes widened.
“I never saw you in my life until that night in London, I———”
“Look closely. Isn't there something more than doubt in your mind as you look into them now?”
“I confess that I have always been puzzled by by something I cannot understand in—but all this leads to nothing,” he broke off harshly. “We are not here to mystify each other, but to———”
“To explain mysteries, that's it, of course. You are looking. What do you see? Are you not sure that you looked into my eyes long, long ago? Are there not moments when my voice is familiar to you, when it speaks to you out of———”
He sat up, rigid as a block of stone.
“Yes, by Heaven, I have felt it all along! To-day I was convinced that the unbelievable had happened. I saw something that———” He stopped short, his lips parted.
She waved her hand in the direction of the Buddha.