The experiences of the night had been so strange, the intense longing of months seemed now so near fruition, that every artery in my body pulsed and drummed, and it was only by a tremendous effort of will that I sat down and forced myself to think.
Here I was, at her own invitation, to rescue my love. As my mind began to work I saw that I must be guided in my course of action by what she told me. Juanita obviously thought that her father's aberration was a form of madness without foundation. She did not know what I had discovered. If she did she might realize that her father was possibly not so mad as she imagined. For myself, after this space of time, I can say that I was very seriously disturbed by Arthur Winstanley's revelations in regard to the unspeakable Midwinter and the news that he was now in England. Perhaps you will remember that in Bill Rolston's telegram to me he hinted at some suspicious strangers having been seen in the private bar of the "Golden Swan." One of them, I had ascertained, answered to the description of Midwinter in every detail, and the two men were seen by Sliddim to drive away through Richmond Park in a large, private car.
Certainly I must tell Juanita something of this and help her to warn her father, perhaps....
And then I remembered the elaborate precautions of my ascent, the literal impossibility of any stranger or strangers ever getting to where I was, and I breathed again.
The place—one couldn't call it a room—in which I sat, was simply a little sexagonal nook or retreat, masked from the great library by its great door of books. Three of the panels which went from the floor to the vaulted ceiling were of dead black silk. The other three were of Chinese embroidery, stiff, with raised gold, and gems, which I realized must be from the choicest examples of their kind in the world. Still, I wasn't interested in dragons of tarnished gold, with opal eyes, ivory teeth, and scales of lapislazuli. I was getting restive when the black panel, which was the back of the entrance door, swung towards me, and I saw Juanita.
She was dressed in black, a sort of tea-gown I suppose you'd call it, though round her shoulders and falling on each side of her slim form was a cloak of heavy sable.
In her blue-black hair—oh, my dear, how true you were then to the fashions of the south, and how true you are to-day—there was a glowing, crimson rose.
We stood and looked at each other, in this tiny room, for I suppose two or three seconds.
What Juanita felt she told me afterwards, and it isn't part of this narrative.
What I felt was awe, sheer, impersonal awe, as I realized that I had surmounted incredible difficulties, endured ages of longing, plotting, planning, and now stood alone in front of the most Beautiful Girl in the World.