"Ah," she sighed, "if I could only see her home for one moment, how bravely I could go on living here!"
CHAPTER XIII
IN PORTMAN SQUARE
"And quite alone I never felt,
I knew that Thou wert near,
A silence tingling in the room,
A strangely pleasant fear."
—Faber.
Arnold Wayne took his way to Portman Square, thinking about Elsie as he went along. If those two could have looked into each other's hearts just then, they would speedily have come to an understanding.
When he went up the steps of the great house and entered the flower-scented hall, he was in a dreamy mood. And when he found himself in Mrs. Verdon's artistically furnished drawing-room, he had a queer notion that only his phantom self was here and his real self had remained in the little room in All Saints' Street.
His hostess looked very slender and tall and fair in her mauve silk dress. Her satiny hair, wound round her small head, conveyed the idea that if unbound it would enshroud her, like Lady Godiva's, in a veil. The rich glowing colours of the furniture and hangings formed themselves into a harmonious background for the graceful figure.