So he turned the door-handle not without expectation. And this time expectation suffered no disappointment. In front of the tall, satin-wood escritoire, her back towards him, her delicate hands wandering anxiously over the painted and polished surface, he beheld once more the slender, rose-clad figure.
Laurence drew in his breath with a sigh of satisfaction. He crossed the room boldly to-night and stood beside her; and her pale, ethereal loveliness entranced him as he spoke.
"Listen to me," he said. "We are strangers to one another—so strangely strangers that I half distrust the evidence of my senses, as, only too conceivably, you distrust the evidence of yours. I don't pretend to understand what distance of time, or space, or conditions, separates us. I only know that I see you, and that you are unhappy, and that you search for something you are unable to find.—Look here, look here—listen to me and try to lay hold of this idea—that I am a friend, not an enemy; that I come to help, not to hinder you. Try to enter into some sort of relation with me. Try to cross the gulf which seems to lie between us. Try to believe that you have found some one who will keep faith with you, and do his best to serve you; and believing that, put sorrow out of your face—"
He stopped suddenly. When he began speaking he might have been addressing a sleep-walker or a person in a trance. There was no speculation in her sweet eyes. They were wild with a wondering distress, looking on him as though not seeing him. But as he continued to plead with her—speaking slowly, pausing at the close of each sentence in the hope that the sense of his words might so reach and arrest her—a gradual change came over her aspect, as of one awakening from prolonged and troubled slumber. There was a dawning of intelligence in her expression, as in that of a little child first struggling to apprehend and measure, not by means of its senses merely, but in obedience to the conscious effort of its mind. The drooping corners of the mouth straightened, turned upward, the lips breaking into a timid, questioning smile. She stretched herself a little, clenched her fists gently, rubbed her eyes with them in innocent, baby fashion, stretched again, and then looked full at Laurence—a woman shy, diffident, but in possession of her faculties, expectant, and alive.
"Yes—yes—there, that's right. Now you look, as you used to, look as you should," he exclaimed, his voice low, shaken with very vital excitement. He felt as when—once or twice—bringing a racing yacht in to the finish, a fair spread of blue water between her stern and her competitor's bows, he had felt her pace quicken while the tiller throbbed and danced under his hand. A buoyancy of heart, a delicious conviction of successful attainment was upon him. Sportsman and poet alike rejoiced in Laurence just then, and the spiritual side of his nature was touched as well. He seemed to have witnessed a glad resurrection, enforcing belief in the immortality of the soul, as he gazed on this lovely face in which reason, hope, even gaiety, were so visibly born anew.
"Never mind about that which you have lost," he said. "Let it be for the present. We will arrive at it in time sure enough—leave all that to me. You want these drawers opened, their locks picked?—Well, that shall be done all in good time. But whatever treasures we find there will be but a trifle, it strikes me, compared with that which we have already found to-night. For I have found you—found you once more—and you, thank God, have found yourself."
Again his companion stretched, and passed her hands across her eyes, while her lips parted in a soundless sigh. Silence held her yet, but that appeared to make singularly little difference in their intercourse. For he perceived that she understood, that she sympathised, that she too was penetrated with quick, intimate joy, and an exquisite and innocent good-fellowship, as plainly as though a very torrent of eloquent explanation and asseveration had issued from her mouth. Indeed, this wordlessness had for him an extraordinary charm. Far from a power being lacking, it was to him as though a new power had been granted, and that the most subtle and convincing to the heart.
Laurence stood tall, upright, in the full pride of his young manhood, of his virile energy and strength, before this slender fairy-lady, with her softly gleaming jewels, her dainty frills and laces, her clinging rose-red, old-world, silken gown, and held out his hands to her.
"Come," he said, "the night is fair and windless and full of stars. Shall we go out into it and read the great poem of the sky and the woodland while all men sleep, you and I—good comrades, old friends, though as most mortals count meeting, we have met each other, it would seem, but twice?—You have known sad things. Well, forget them. You have searched vainly for lost things. Well, forget them too. The finest house at best remains somewhat of a prison, and this room is pervaded by melancholy memories. Leave it. Let us give the past, give convention, give reason even, the slip for once—and go."
For a minute or more she hesitated, looking at Laurence profoundly, as though trying to read his inmost thought. Then she laid her hand in his. It had neither weight nor substance, but touched his palm as a light summer wind might have touched his cheek, or a butterfly's wings might have fluttered, with a just perceptible pulsation, within the hollow of his hands.