He felt his way blindly through the crowd and pushed roughly past a hundred hands extended to congratulate him. He walked by instinct. He couldn't see. The mists of eternity seemed suddenly to have swept him beyond the range of time and sense.
In the hall he stumbled against Cleo and looked at her in a dazed way.
"Get your hat," she whispered.
He returned to the cloakroom, got his hat and hurried back in the same dull stupor.
"Come down stairs into the Square," she said quickly.
He followed her without a word, and when they reached the shadows of an oak below the windows of the Hall, he suddenly roused himself, turned on her fiercely and demanded:
"Well, what's happened?"
The girl was calm now, away from the crowd and guarded by the friendly night. Her words were cool and touched with the least suggestion of bravado. She looked at him steadily:
"I reckon you know——"
"You mean——" He felt for the tree trunk as if dizzy.