“I’ve brought the American author, Miss Howard. Here he is—Bayard Lorraine!”
When they stood face to face, she was the calmer of the two. She had been nerving herself for this so long, looking for it, longing for it, that now, with a glad consciousness of her perfect beauty, and an inward thrill of deep emotion, she could greet Bayard Lorraine with a lovely girlish dignity all her own. It was he who looked startled, disturbed. He stared at her in perplexity, as if she had been a ghost.
Fair looked at him with a smile. She could guess what made him stare in such surprise.
She made him think of the girl whose life he had saved two years ago.
“He remembers my face, although he was too proud to ask my name,” she thought, and it soothed her wounded pride to think that he had at least retained some memory of her through the time that had elapsed.
But not for worlds would she have owned to her identity.
“We meet now on equal terms,” was her swift thought, and she determined to hold her vantage ground.
What could come of it? Nothing! She was not free, and it was more than likely that he was married. Yet a headlong fate seemed to urge her on to know him better, to make the most of her opportunity, to gain from this fleeting chance some more bittersweet memories to wear thread-bare with constant usage in coming years.
While these swift emotions rather than thoughts ran through her whirling brain, he recovered himself, and greeted her with simple conventional ease, apologizing with easy grace for his wondering stare.
“I fear you took me for a moon-struck lunatic—but I was beauty-struck.”