“Good evening,” he said politely.
“You!”
She stood staring at him; her blue eyes big in her pale face; her hands up to her heart as if to still its tumult. She wore a loose black peignoir that showed off by contrast the pearly whiteness of her skin. Against the background of her pale gold hair her face was delicately sweet. For the hundredth time she reminded him of a lily.
“It is, indeed, you?”
She took both his hands and pulled him gently into the room. She had pinned up her hair rather hastily, and it came tumbling about her. As she raised her hands again to pile it about her head, he stopped her.
“No, leave it like that. It was like that the first time I saw you. I will always think of you that way.”
She let it fall, a shimmering cape around her.
“I’m sorry,” she said faintly, “to receive you in this poor shabby room. Please sit down on that chair. It’s my only one.”
He took it. She herself sat down on the edge of the bed, facing him.
“I hurried to get here,” he told her awkwardly. “I wanted to be present at the ceremony,—even if only as a spectator in the background.”