As he had spoken, his eyes on the mask of bitterness and hatred, something rushed over him. It was like the melting of a frozen stream under the first warm sunshine. It seemed to him that he had looked straight down through those eyes into the very heart of human misery, and had understood. He remembered his own words: "There is only one distinction between men—the unhappy and the happy, the cursed and the blessed." They blazed now with a real significance. Men were pitchforked into this world with distorted bodies or distorted souls—what did it matter which? They deserved neither hatred nor condemnation—they were the awful mystery of humanity, the visible symbol of the curse under which humanity totters. "Here, but for a wild incalculable chance, go I, Tristram."
He bent down and laid his hand on Boucicault's arm. He did not stop to think whether or not his touch might be repugnant to the other man. He acted out of an imperative instinct.
"You mustn't worry," he said gently, and almost gaily. "You'll live to do for me yet, Boucicault! Good night again."
The eyes closed as though they had burnt themselves out. Tristram moved quietly to the verandah. He had a sudden sense of freedom, of physical relief, which was like an awakening from a suffocating nightmare. He went down the steps into the garden. It was then, as he stood there listening to the music and the distant voices, that he saw Sigrid Fersen come towards him. His eyes could not have recognized her face, for it was dark and she was moving quickly, like a pale mysterious light, through the shadow of the trees. But he knew her. Was it her step—the lithe, familiar motion of her body—or something deep-hidden within himself which irresistibly went out to her? He could not have told. He waited for her. She came on unseeingly to the edge of the faint reflection from Boucicault's room, and then stood still, staring at him. Her small, white face had an aghast look. He tried to speak to her and could not. His throat hurt him.
He knew now that he had never known her, never, even in his dreams of her, realized her potentialities. He knew that she had deliberately thrown down her weapons to meet him in the stern simplicity of his life. She had been too proud, too self-assured perhaps to fear to show herself to him physically at her least. Now he saw her at her highest—the priceless, polished stone in a rare and exquisite setting.
A languorous breath of night-wind ruffled the smooth gold of her hair and lifted the flimsy scarf from her shoulders. It fluttered out behind her like a pale mist. He saw the single string of pearls at her neck. He fancied he could see the passionate life beating beneath them. And through all her brilliancy, her burning vitality, there was a strain of quaint Victorianism, a demure elfishness—like the inter-weaving of a minuet with the riot of a bacchanal.
He could not have spoken to her, and at last a smile dawned at the corners of her mouth. He knew that she had been afraid, and it flashed upon him that in the bitterest moment she would retain her humour, her zest of life.
"You quite frightened me, Major Tristram," she said. "I have never seen you in uniform before."
"Does it become me?" he heard himself ask back.
"No. You look as though you were rather stifled by so much magnificence. And you've never seen me in full gala either, have you?"