She was very simply dressed in a frock of filmy grey-green chiffon whose colour reminded him of the spiky leaves of a carnation; but he had never seen her look prettier than on that mild spring night; and his eyes unconsciously softened as they dwelt upon her face for one fleeting moment.
Then as Chloe's soft, deep voice, introducing her brother, stole on his ear, he turned to greet the other man; and instantly he realized, too late, the meaning of that presentiment of ill which had haunted him all day; understood why the inner, spiritual part of him had bidden him refuse Chloe Carstairs' invitation to Cherry Orchard that night.
For the man who turned leisurely from the window to greet the new-comer was the man whom he had last seen in a green-walled bedroom in an Indian hotel, the man whom, by a tragic error, he had robbed of the woman he loved, from whom he had parted with a mutual hope that their paths in life might never cross again.
Mrs. Carstairs' brother was the man whom Hilda Ryder had loved, Bruce Cheniston himself.
CHAPTER VI
As a rule the psychological moments of life come and go so quietly that their passing attracts little notice. Quite minor happenings give rise to demonstrations of excitement, of joy, of loudly voiced approbation or disappointment. But the moments which really matter in a life, which mark an epoch or destroy a dream, pass as a rule so quietly that only those whose dreams are shattered, or whose lives have been touched with the glory of the immortal, know that for a brief instant Time has become interchangeable with Eternity; that in the space of sixty fleeting seconds whole cycles of life have been lived through, and a vast and yawning gulf, in thought, in feeling, in spiritual growth or mental outlook, has opened to divide this moment from the one which directly preceded it.
Such a moment was this one in which the two men who were bound together by so tragic a link came face to face in Chloe Carstairs' drawing-room.
Each had been quite sincere in his dread of any future meeting; but whereas Bruce Cheniston had been the victim of as cruel a circumstance as ever deprived lover of his beloved, Anstice was the more to be pitied, inasmuch as to his own burden of regret must be added the knowledge that through his premature action he had given another man the right to execrate his name so long as they both should live.