The man and the woman appeared.
"Puppetty! Puppetty!... Excuse me, have you seen anything of a little—— Good heavens alive, if it isn't Sir George Coverham! Of all the—fancy meeting——"
But I had eyes for her for one fleeting instant only. All at once there had come a stifled cry from Derry. He stood there, dark against the morning light, embroidered round with light. His eyes were immovably on that woman who had called the dog—on that Daphne Bassett who, in years that were now clean-sponged from his memory, had been Daphne Wade. Jennie too was staring at her, bewildered that he should stare so. Her hand was still on his shoulder. She drew a little more closely to him.
The struggle that began on his darkened face was a struggle to remember something; or perhaps its real beginning was that he seemed to remember that there was something to remember. But what? Not a book that he had written? Not a book that she had written? Not two books, of which he had written one and she the other? He had never written a book—had never dreamed of writing a book; he left that to clever people like Sir George Coverham and Mrs. Aird—"Mummie."
A picture, then? No, not a picture. He had dabbled in paint for a bit—there was a lot of stuffy old canvas in the hotel now—but it couldn't be that.... He did not look at Jennie. His hands tried to put her away from him. He muttered hoarsely.
"Let me go, Jennie, let me go."
But she only held him the more closely, both arms now wrapped about him.
Then he cried out sharply, loudly. "Let go—let go, I say—and don't look—take your eyes away—don't look at my face!"
But she would now never let him go. She would look at his face, yes, even though he commanded her not to, because of what had already begun to pass there....
And what that was you may see by turning back to the beginning of this book. Yesterday, in the Tour de l'Horloge, a clock had prepared to strike the hour. It had begun with the soft fluttering of a vane that had dissolved into a mist; there had been the murmur of mechanism, those preparatory notes on an open third.