“Yes. Come with me. We can find a seat somewhere. If you have any engagement, you must break it.”
She dropped her veil hurriedly. If there are tears in a woman’s eyes, she does not care to have the fact noticed while she is crossing the crowded foyer of a hotel. Manlike, Power attributed her action to the wrong cause.
“Why hide your face?” he said, striving hard to control an unaccountable tremolo in his voice. “What have you been doing? Praying at Lourdes?”
She did not pretend to misunderstand: “A French doctor worked this particular miracle. The chief ingredients were some months of suffering and the skin of eggs. It was not vanity on my part. I was tired of the world’s pity.”
“Then, thank Heaven, I loved you before your scientist doubled your good looks!”
They had found two chairs in a palm-shaded corner, and Marguerite raised her veil again. Then he saw why she had lowered it.
“Derry,” she said, and her lips quivered, “why were you so cruel?”
“I’ll tell you. May I?”
“Not now. I couldn’t bear it.”
“Can you bear being told that I have never ceased to love you—that you have dwelt constantly in my thoughts during all these slow years?”