She seemed a thing of warmth and sunshine, too impalpable for the rough uses of the world. One would have said she was the embodied spirit of the warm south of Keats’s ode. Her dark hair, massed in a hundred little waves over her forehead and temples, gave an indescribable softness to her face. A faint tinge of rose shone through her dark skin. Her great brown eyes contained immeasurable depths of tenderness. A subtly-mingled, all-pervading sense of summer and the exquisitely feminine enveloped her from the beautiful hair to her tiny feet. She was in the sweetest bloom of her womanhood and she had all the unconscious, half-pathetic charm of a child. In a crowded ball-room, amidst dazzling dresses and flashing arms and necks and under the electric light, Yvonne’s beauty might have passed unnoticed. But there, in the shady walk upon which they had just entered, in that quiet world of cool greens and shadowed yellows, she appeared to the man’s weary eyes the most beautiful thing on the earth.
“How sweet it is here,” she said, as they sat down upon a bench.
“Incomprehensibly sweet,” he replied.
His tone touched her. She laid her tiny gloved hand upon his arm.
“I wish I could help you—Mr. Chisely,” she said gently.
“That is no longer my name,” he said. “And so you must n’t call me by it. I have given it up since—since I came out. Would you care to hear about me? It would help me to speak a little.”
“That’s why I brought you here,” said Yvonne.
He bent forward, elbows on knees, covering his face in his hands.
“I don’t know, after all, that there’s much to say. My poor mother died while I was in prison—you know that; I suppose I broke her heart. Her money was sunk in an annuity. The furniture and things were sold to pay outstanding debts of mine. I came out five months ago, penniless. Everard’s bankers communicated with me. As the head of the family he had collected a lump sum of money, which was given to me on condition that I should change my name and never let any of the family hear of my existence again. My mother’s people refused to have anything to do with me. God knows why I was sitting outside their house to-day. Perhaps you think I ought n’t to have accepted Everard’s gift. A man hasn’t much pride left after two years’ hard labour.... I took the name of Joyce. I saw it on a tradesman’s cart as I reached the street after the interview. One name is as good as another.”
“But you are still Stephen?” said Yvonne.