Jane shook her head, but she looked again, uneasily, at the window. There was nothing there but the reflection of the interior of the room—Anna taking plates of the table, two or three older men standing by the fire, the silhouettes of the musicians’ heads, her mother hurrying in to see about something and then hurrying out again, people moving past the door.
Then, all of a sudden, there it was again! Fantastically white, it seemed to Jane, and apparently without any body accompanying it, so that it looked like a mask suspended outside the window. She sprang up in a fright, not thinking for a moment that it might be no more than the face of some inquisitive wayfarer, who had stolen into the garden to peer in upon the festivities.
All at once, hope, fear, doubt and joy broke over her.
“Paul!”
The cello fell over onto the floor with an indignant “thrum-m!” as she darted forward. The next moment, she had opened the door, and stood upon the snowy step, looking eagerly about in the shadows of the garden.
“Paul! Paul! Are you there?”
A figure moved out of the darkness, into the shaft of light that streamed through the open door.
“Janey!” She heard the unmistakably familiar short laugh as she flung herself into his bear-like hug.
“You’ve come back! I knew it! I knew you would!” she cried, patting his shoulders and the wet, rough sleeves of his shabby coat in a perfect ecstasy of delight. “Oh, Paul—come in! come in quickly!” But he drew back.
“No, no Janey. I can’t do that. But what’s going on, anyway?”