"You shall sing to him this evening, when it is getting dark, and see whether he does not want to light candles, and scare away the creatures of the night," said Miss Forester.
Denzil sighed with pleasure. Here were two delightful women ready to pet him. One of them more fascinating than he had believed a human woman could be. He was in a whirl. He hardly knew where he was, or what he said. He was sure that he said many things that in England he would never even think. Some of them were brilliant, he believed; but, as in a dream, he forgot one thing before the next bubbled up from the soil of his fancy.
In the afternoon they took him driving, and Nadia sat by his side. It was more like flying upon a rosy cloud.
And then, in the gloaming, as she had promised, Nadia sang.
Denzil, as we know, was not an emotional person. But in the friendly dusk, his tears overflowed his eyes and slipped down his cheeks. This, indeed, was music. This, indeed, was magic. It was as though, until now, he had been insensate clay, and that some potent spell had brought him, in a flash, to life. He was not physically strong—let it be remembered in his defense. In this enchanted palace his life of former days ceased to exist.
The white-robed girl, a miracle of slenderness, sang as she stood by the piano, and the light of the two wax candles by which Miss Forester played just gilded the edges of her outline and her features, as he sat in the dark distance gazing, gloating, trembling with the force of his feeling.
When that evening was over, and he retired to his room, he had ceased to reflect. He had begun to live solely in the present, as those in the clutch of a passion usually do. He gave no thought to his life in England, nor to the fact that the girl to whom he was virtually engaged was on her way to him by a difficult and dangerous route. He thought merely that he would see Nadia Stepanovna the following morning, and that he would pass the whole day in her company. Nothing else mattered.
CHAPTER XXVI
STRANGERS YET
She looked upon him with an almost smile
And held to him a hand that faltered not....
She did not sigh, she never said "Alas!"
Although he was her friend.
—JEAN INGELOW.