I told her she would be otherwise occupied now than in making sketches, and we both laughed as we passed up the steps together.
In the hall hovered, like two evil shadows, her maid and my valet, lying in wait for us to remind us of clothes and the serious duties of life. I saw Lucia carried off from me with despairing eyes, knowing it would be ages before I saw her again.
It did not take me long to get into another suit, and then I returned to the dining-room, and roamed about from end to end, too restless to sit down to glance at the papers that lay on the different tables, or even to light up a cigar. I walked about aimlessly, longing for the woman's presence beside me again.
It was a very large room—two, properly, knocked into one—with a window looking to the front and the carriage-drive, and another at the side, opening, with French glass doors, on to the low stone terrace which overlooked the lawn.
Through these I wandered at last on to the terrace, and rested my arms on the low balustrade, looking with unseeing eyes across the lawn, with its tropical trees standing motionless in the golden haze. Everything around me was very still, and a peculiar strained calm seemed to be upon me also—the calm of an intense desire, hushed and expectant, in all the blood.
A swift, hurried step came on to the terrace, and I turned instantly.
The light fell all over her, the living incarnation of my long drawn out hopes and dreams. She had changed her dress to a light dinner-silk. The bodice was modest—I mean by that, it was unobtrusive—very. Excess of nervous excitement, the wealth of evening sunlight, and her fashion of dressing made her dazzling to look upon, and I stood for a second in silence.
She misunderstood my pause and glance, and a rush of hot colour came into her face, and the tears suddenly started to her eyes.
"You don't like my dress," she exclaimed. "I told Celine she was cutting it too low!"
A step forward and I had her in my arms. Ah! what were dreams to the keen, sharp delight of feeling her there—alive, and in the flesh—throbbing and pulsating against me? I declared the dress was perfect, that I would not have the bodice half an inch higher for anything, that she looked adorable, and so on, until she was comforted. The tears passed into laughter, and the flush died away; but she trembled against me distressingly, and her lips quivered nervously.