At last he had set foot in the particular room, which was to him the shrine, the inner sanctuary, of this Temple of the Arts. It was already crowded here, and his first impression was of a mass of silk hats and beflowered millinery rather than of pictures. He hesitated in the doorway an instant, then began the slow tour of the room, pausing before every picture in turn, so as to indulge in the pleasurable make-believe of coming on Lady Betty again suddenly. Gradually he worked his way along and it was not till he had come again within reach of his starting-point that his own frame gleamed on his vision. He manoeuvred through a bevy of ladies, and then found himself side by side with a girlish figure in a light flowered muslin costume and a pretty hat trimmed with violets. He had stepped quite close to her out of the crowd, by which she had been entirely hidden; but, his eyes drawn imperiously to the portrait of Lady Betty, he was merely aware of his neighbour as one of the crowd, and he did not even look at her definitely. He saw just her gloved hand holding her catalogue, and, in a vague way, he wondered what she was thinking of the picture. He felt rather than saw that his neighbour had stepped back a little, as if naturally to make way for him. Then some mysterious impulse made him turn, and their eyes met. In all those winter days that were past he had never seen her so bright and gracious as she appeared now, clad for the summer, and in this sparkling universe. Never before had those violet eyes shone with so perfect a light, as of the full freshness of childhood. Yet her face was pallid and awestruck as she gazed at him. But a wild joy sang at his heart, and he felt his blood pulsing with a glad note that seemed to be at one with the note that sang to him from horizons of enchantment opening before him; at one, too, with the note that sang to him out of all this exquisite Paris!
"I am free," he whispered. "Do you understand? Free!"
"Free?"
He divined rather than heard the breathed exclamation from the movement of her lips—read the amazed questioning of her eyes.
"I have not broken my promise to you!" The crowd surged round them, struggling to see his picture, ejaculating banal words of admiration. "You do not doubt!" he whispered tensely.
The blood came back to her face at last. "No! But the how?—the why?"
"She sought her release!"
"She suspected the truth!" She was pale again.
"We cheated ourselves. She cared for one of her own kind. Our renunciation was an irony."
Lady Betty bent her head. Her brow was wrinkled for a moment in thought, and her hand trembled visibly.