“Then the way she hesitated when I asked his name: ‘J-Jack’ why of course! She was always the frankest, most absurdly truthful creature; and she had started to say—ah! It was almost too exquisite, even the hint of it. And—‘it’s gone on so long now—our being just good pals’ came back to me on leaping little bounds of recollection; and then ‘oh, don’t you see, if he did care—and was perhaps in exactly my position’—Hm! There was certainly no one else of whom she could possibly have thought that; no one else who had been shown her ‘worst moods’ as well as her ‘craziest hopes and plans!’ My children (Warner passed his plate of pink cakes to each one of them, with an elaborate bow, while his wonderful smiling eyes mocked their gravity), I assure you, that was one of the most remarkable twenty-four hours I have ever spent—from the time I left her, till the time I saw her again next afternoon. Those of you who have known the emotion will remember its alternative phases—of leaving one entirely strangled, and again curiously hollow. I underwent them both, with breathless rapidity, all night and the next day; and they left me rather weak-kneed and stuttery, when I arrived at the Galleries at precisely half past four.
“I strolled about, and watched the Americans, at the same time keeping a weather eye out for her—and Jack! Awfully amusing, you know, waiting round for one’s fate to make up its mind! I never spent such a funny half hour in my life!
“Then I saw her. And she was alone. And, you know, to this day, for the life of me, I can’t remember what I thought—much less what I said or did, when I saw her—alone—at five o’clock! I do remember she had on another blue gown, some sort of tailored thing, with little lines in it; and those lines danced themselves up and down and round that room, till somehow they caught up those tiresome weighted feet of mine, and drew me over to her.
“‘Jack not here?’ I asked—oh, with an enormous carelessness. My voice, once out, sounded so odd, I just asked again to make sure.
“‘Jack not here?’ ‘No—no; that is, not yet. I can’t understand,’ she went on hurriedly, ‘I wrote him a line—rather an absurd line, I’m afraid—and told him if for any reason he couldn’t be here, to send me a wire. And he didn’t send the wire, and I haven’t seen anything of him—up till now.’
“Up till now! I was grinning like a fool, trying to remember all I had planned to say, and failing utterly to say anything—until she took the reins and suggested rather faintly that we might as well have tea.
“So we had it; and I gulped mine, and said quite the most brilliant things I’ve ever said in my life—naturally, since I hadn’t an idea what I was talking about; and watched her eat her muffin (which she did with the most frantic deliberation), wishing to goodness she’d finish, so that—well, one certainly could not propose, with the person eating a muffin!
“At last she did finish, and—I was cold from my head to my feet—I knew it was The Time! She had given me undivided attention all during tea, gave it me still. Her eyes had never once wandered after some one who might be expected.
“‘Dear old girl’—I had leaned forward to where I could watch her eyes a bit better; when suddenly I saw in them something—something I had never seen before, something I have never seen since, in a woman’s eyes. It knocked the breath all out of me—you see (Warner’s laugh was the lightest thing in the world) I thought it was for me, that look. Great joke!—for in another second she’d jumped up, run round the other side of the table behind me, and held out both hands to—Jack! Some wretched duffer I’d never heard of, he turned out to be; knew her in Paris or somewhere, where she’d spent a lot of time. Seems that since he’d come to England people had rather scared him off, by tales of me! Perf’ly ridiculous, I told him; she told him, too. Absolutely extraordinary! Why I—I was just old Jim, you know—like the elephant; good old friend—er pal’s the word rather; good old pal, and all that, but—well, so that’s the end (Warner stood up and faced them all, more debonair than ever), for they lived happily ever after.”
“Yes, but—but how did this er—eccentric young person who preferred some one else to you, effect the er—the explanation, I mean to say?” came from Lady Trot’s dim corner of the room. “Such extremely quick adjustment, you make it, dear Mr. Warner!”