Chapter XXX

One blue summer morning, Wyndham, for the twentieth time at least, entered the Salon through his customary turnstile, and stood in the great central court, under the crystal roof, amid the gleaming display of statuary. There was already a goodly number of people about; not yet a crowd, but enough for the costumes and hats of the fair sex to colour the whole place like a flower-garden. He moved about among them for awhile, his eye keen and ready; then ascended the staircase, and entered the nearest doorway. He spent an hour or two in leisurely progression through the galleries, long since familiar with all the pictures, and staying only before the interesting ones, yet with attention ever on the alert.

At last he had set foot in the particular room, which was to him the shrine, the inner sanctuary, of this Temple of the Arts. It was already crowded here, and his first impression was of a mass of silk hats and beflowered millinery rather than of pictures. He hesitated in the doorway an instant, then began the slow tour of the room, pausing before every picture in turn, so as to indulge in the pleasurable make-believe of coming on Lady Betty again suddenly. Gradually he worked his way along and it was not till he had come again within reach of his starting-point that his own frame gleamed on his vision. He manoeuvred through a bevy of ladies, and then found himself side by side with a girlish figure in a light flowered muslin costume and a pretty hat trimmed with violets. He had stepped quite close to her out of the crowd, by which she had been entirely hidden; but, his eyes drawn imperiously to the portrait of Lady Betty, he was merely aware of his neighbour as one of the crowd, and he did not even look at her definitely. He saw just her gloved hand holding her catalogue, and, in a vague way, he wondered what she was thinking of the picture. He felt rather than saw that his neighbour had stepped back a little, as if naturally to make way for him. Then some mysterious impulse made him turn, and their eyes met. In all those winter days that were past he had never seen her so bright and gracious as she appeared now, clad for the summer, and in this sparkling universe. Never before had those violet eyes shone with so perfect a light, as of the full freshness of childhood. Yet her face was pallid and awestruck as she gazed at him. But a wild joy sang at his heart, and he felt his blood pulsing with a glad note that seemed to be at one with the note that sang to him from horizons of enchantment opening before him; at one, too, with the note that sang to him out of all this exquisite Paris!

"I am free," he whispered. "Do you understand? Free!"

"Free?"

He divined rather than heard the breathed exclamation from the movement of her lips--read the amazed questioning of her eyes.

"I have not broken my promise to you!" The crowd surged round them, struggling to see his picture, ejaculating banal words of admiration. "You do not doubt!" he whispered tensely.

The blood came back to her face at last. "No! But the how?--the why?"

"She sought her release!"

"She suspected the truth!" She was pale again.

"We cheated ourselves. She cared for one of her own kind. Our renunciation was an irony."

Lady Betty bent her head. Her brow was wrinkled for a moment in thought, and her hand trembled visibly.

"An irony--no," she said gently. "We were true to ourselves--the future lies the fairer before us."

The press around them grew closer.

"Mais c'est chic ca!"

"Un beau talent!"

"C'est exquis!"

She took his arm, as if seeking freer air, and they moved through the throng that continued its compliments, unsuspecting of the proximity of either artist or subject. They stood at last on the great balcony, and looked down on the splendid court agleam with sculpture and greenery.

"I have searched Europe for you!" he said.

"This great change in our lives--it is too wonderful to grasp all at once," she murmured musingly.

"I do not see why we should not stroll round to the Embassy now, and inquire," he suggested stoutly.

"Inquire about what?" she asked, her deep absent look changing to bewilderment.

"As to when they can marry us, of course!"

"Oh, I see," she said, with a quick smile; but her glance was inward again.

"You don't think me precipitate?" he asked uneasily.

"I am thinking of Alice," she returned. "I could have sworn she was the soul of constancy."

THE END.

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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

Punctuation has been normalized.

Page 106, "unobstrusive" changed to "unobtrusive". (her unobtrusive
walking-costume)

Page 273, "any thing" changed to "anything". (was there anything more
ridiculous)

Page 343, "ne" changed to "net". (2s. 6d. net)

Chapter numbers at end of the book have been corrected so as to be
sequential. (Chapter XXVIII, XXIX, and XXX)

End of Project Gutenberg's An Engagement of Convenience, by Louis Zangwill