“There you wrong me,” he cried.
They fenced as they had fenced before; but on her mention of Stellamaris, Herold had closed against her the outer court of his heart into which she had stepped, and, looking at her, had become frozenly aware that the dark Irish eyes, and the raven hair on a stately head, and the curved, promising lips, and the queenly figure, and the genius and rich womanhood of which these were the investiture of flesh, meant to him nothing and less than nothing. The woman read her sentence in his eyes, and abruptly left him, and stood in the wings until her entrance. And Herold, manlike, gave her no thought; for his head was in a whirl, and his heart afire, with a new and consuming knowledge. The splendour of all the Leonora Gurneys, of all the splendid women of the earth, faded into a pale glimmer before the starry eyes of one girl.
As a wonder-child, as a thing of sea-foam and sunset cloud, she had crept into his soul and had taken up therein her everlasting habitation. She was the very music of his being, an indissoluble essence of himself. He wondered, as men untouched by love do wonder, why no woman had done more than stir the surface of emotion. Now he knew. He had loved her in her exquisite ideality with a love that was more than love. Now, in her magical transformation, he loved her with love itself.
Stella Maris, star of the sea! Stella Herold, star of that which is greater than all the multitudinous seas of earth, the soul of a man!
He dreamed his dreams, and gave that evening an exceedingly bad performance.
Soon afterwards, with drums playing and colours flying, Stella came with her retinue to London. She had rooms in a magnificent hostelry, a magnificent hired motor-car to transport her, and as magnificent raiment, chosen by her own delicate self, as any young woman could desire. But despite all this magnificence, she wept over many a lost illusion. Where were the music-haunted streets, the golden pavements, the gorgeous castles, the joyous throngs of which John, years ago, had fed the swift imagination of the child?
On their way from Victoria' Station they passed through St. James's Park.
“That's Buckingham Palace,” said Sir Oliver, with more pride than if he owned it.
“That?”
Her heart sank like a stone dropped down a well: That dingy, black barrack the stately home of the king? And when they swung up Constitution Hill and lined up in the traffic by Hyde Park Corner, “This,” said Sir Oliver, “is Piccadilly.”