When he arrived at the hotel, Miss Messenger was in the garden, and he was shown up into her private sitting-room to await her. Still thoughtfully considering the best means to approach the production of the scarf, he walked absent-mindedly across the room and began to stare at the photographs on the mantelpiece. And then, suddenly, he became aware of the illusion that he was gazing at a background of dark yews, against which was vividly posed the delicate profile of some exquisite cameo. He blinked his eyes in amazement, and the background changed to the commonplace detail reflected in the mirror. But the face remained, the very profile he had seen by the plantation, a face sensitive and full of sadness, staring wistfully out as if at some unwelcome vision of the future.
Harrison shivered. It seemed to him as if a thin draught of cold air were blowing past him. And then, for a moment, he had a sense of immense distances and strange activities beyond the knowledge of common life. He was aware of some old experience newly recognised after long ages of forgetfulness; an experience that came back to him elusive as the thought of a recent dream. But while he struggled to place that fugitive memory, the door behind him opened, and the dark curtain of physical reality was suddenly interposed between him and his vision.
He heard the voice of Miss Messenger speaking to him close at hand.
“That’s my friend, Rhoda Burton,” she was saying. “The photograph was taken only a week before she died. She was in great trouble even then, poor darling.”
HERE ENDS SIGNS AND WONDERS, THE THIRD
BOOK PRINTED AT THE GOLDEN COCKEREL
PRESS, WALTHAM SAINT LAWRENCE,
BERKSHIRE. THIS EDITION OF 1500
COPIES FINISHED ON THE
15TH. OF JUNE
1921.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
The cover image of this eBook was created by the transcriber and is entered into the public domain.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.