[CHAPTER VIII]
THE MOMENT
The miracle had been achieved. She was sitting upon his bed, her hands in her lap, looking with curiosity about her. She was very calm and quiet, as she always was, but she suddenly turned and smiled at him as though she would say: "I do like you for having brought me here."
His happiness almost choked him, but he was determined to be severely practical. He found out from her the name of her uncle and the hotel at which he was staying. He wrote a few lines saying that Miss Christina Tenssen was here in his room, that it was urgently necessary that she should be fetched by her uncle as soon as possible for reasons that he, Henry, would explain later. He got Christina herself to write a line at the bottom of the page.
"You see if we went on to your uncle's hotel now at once he might not be in and we would not be able to go up to his room. It is much better that we should stay here. Your mother may come on here, but they shall only take you from this room over my dead body." He laughed. "That's a phrase," he said, "that comes naturally to me because I'm a romantic novelist. Nevertheless, this time it's true. All the most absurd things become true at such a time as this. If you knew what nights and days I've dreamt of you being just like this, sitting alone with me like this. . . . Oh, Gimini! I'm happy. . . ." He pressed the bell that here rang and there did not. For the first time in history (but was not to-day a fairy tale?) the carroty-haired factotum arrived with marvellous promptitude, quite breathless with unwonted exertion. Henry gave him the note. He looked for an instant at Christina, then stumbled away.
"If your uncle is in he should be here in half an hour. If he is out, of course, it will be longer. At least I have half an hour. For half an hour you are my guest in my own palace, and for anything in the world that you require I have only to clap my hands and it shall be brought to you!"
"I don't want anything," she said; "only to sit here and be quiet and talk to you." She took off her hat and it reposed with its scarlet feather on Henry's rickety table.
She looked about her, smiling at everything. "I like it all—everything. That picture—those books. It is so like you—even the carpet!"
"Won't you lie down on the bed?" he said. "And I'll sit here, quite close, where I can see you. And I'll take your hand if you don't mind. I suppose we shan't meet for a long time again, and then we shall be so old that it will all be quite different. I shall never have a moment like this again, and I want to make the very most of it and then remember every instant so long as I live!"
She lay down as he had asked her and her hand was in his.