In the darkness, lit only now by the lamp-dazzled moonlight, and in the mist of her own tears, the man before her was exactly like Martin, in build, gait, colouring and expression. Her moment of recognition stood out clear, quite distinct from the realization of impossibility which afterwards engulfed it. She unclasped her hands and half rose in her seat—the next minute she fell back. "Reckon I'm crazy," she thought to herself.
Then she was startled to realize that the man had sat down beside her. Her heart beat quickly. Though she no longer confused him with Martin, the image of Martin persisted in her mind ... how wonderfully like him he was ... the very way he walked....
"I saw you give me the glad eye ..." not the way he talked, certainly.
There was a terrible silence.
"Are you going to pretend you didn't?"
Joanna turned on him the tear-filled eyes he had considered glad. She blinked the tears out recklessly on to her cheek, and opened her mouth to reduce him to the level of the creeping things upon the earth.... But the mouth remained open and speechless. She could not look him in the face and still feel angry. Though now she would no longer have taken him for Martin, the resemblance still seemed to her startling. He had the same rich eyes—with an added trifle of impudence under the same veiling, womanish lashes, the same black sweep of hair from a rather low forehead, the same graceful setting of the head, though he had not Martin's breadth of shoulder or deceiving air of strength.
Her hesitation gave him his opportunity.
"You aren't going to scold me, are you? I couldn't help it."
His unlovely, Cockney voice had in it a stroking quality. It stirred something in the depths of Joanna's heart. Once again she tried to speak and could not.
"It's such a lovely night—just the sort of night you feel lonely, unless you've got someone very nice with you."