As carriage after carriage passed him, he began to fancy Jeannette, in all her roseate beauty, driving toward him. He saw the curve of her ankle as she stepped into the carriage; he dreamed of her flower-like attitude as she leaned to the cushions.
Then the miracle happened; Jeannette, a little tired, a little pale, a little more fragile than when last he had seen her, was coming toward him. A smile, a gentle, tender, slightly sad—but yet so sweet, so sweet!—a smile was on her lips. He took her hand and held it and looked into her eyes, and the two souls in that instant kissed and became one.
"This time," he said—and as he spoke all that had happened since they had pretended, childishly, on the top of the old stage on the Avenue, seemed to slip away, to fade, to be forgotten—"it must be a real luncheon. You are fagged. So am I. You are like a breath of lilies-of-the-valley. Come!"
They took a table by an open window. The procession of the town nearly touched them, so close was it. To them both it seemed, to-day, a happy, joyous, fine procession.
"Will you tell me something?" asked the girl, presently, after they had laughed and chattered like two children for awhile.
"Anything in the world."
"Well, then—are you ever, ever going to face that dreadful mirror again?"
He smiled, as if there was nothing astonishing in her knowledge, her question.
"Do you want me not to?"
She nodded.