Chapter XII

Hardly conscious of her movements, Clodagh left the card-room and passed down the corridor.

Her only tangible sensations were anger and self-contempt. The thought that Serracauld, who had seemed less than nothing in the scheme of her life--Serracauld, with whom she had laughed and jested and flirted because he was a boy and of no account--should have treated her lightly; should have presumed to kiss her, to seize her violently in his arms, was something shameful and intolerable. The simplicity of her upbringing--the uncontaminated childhood that her country had given her--rose to confront her in this newest crisis. Vain, frivolous, foolish she might be, but beneath the vanity, the frivolity, the folly, she was--and always had been--good, in the primitive, fundamental sense of the word.

She hurried down the corridor, and down the staircase that she had ascended so short a time before; but, reaching the ground floor, she did not turn towards the ballroom, from which the sound of the violins still floated. Instinctively, she moved in the opposite direction, towards the quieter portion of the house in which stood the music-room.

The door of the room was closed when she reached it, and no sound came to her from within. For a space she stood hesitating outside; then the distant murmur of talk and laughter roused her to action. Her hesitancy fled before her distaste for companionship. She raised her hand and noiselessly opened the door.

To enter the music-room was to enter a region of romance. For, as the card-room upstairs suggested the world and the things of the world, this room seemed to embrace all the repose, all the dignity, all the peace that such places as Tuffnell gather unto themselves with the passage of time. It was a long, low-ceiled room with wainscoted walls and a polished oak floor; and the first object that met the visitor's eye, was an old harpsichord, mutely eloquent of bygone days; for, with rare good taste, Lady Diana had hidden her piano behind a tapestry screen, worked many centuries ago by another lady of the house. Even on this night of festivity, the place retained its peculiar quiet; only half a dozen candles burned in the sconces that hung upon the walls; and the scent of lavender and dried rose-leaves lingered upon the air.

It seemed what it was--a room in which, for numberless generations, women of refinement had made music, read poetry or sung songs, while they wove about them the indescribable atmosphere of home.

And into this room Clodagh stepped, her heart burning, her mind distressed, pained, and hurt.

For an instant she paused upon the threshold, overwhelmed by the contrast between the aloofness, the graceful repose of the place, and tumult of her own thoughts; then, yielding to the spirit of peace, she closed the door resolutely and went forward into the room.

But at sound of the closing door, at sound of her dress upon the polished floor, an answering sound came from behind the tapestry screen--the noise of a chair being quietly pushed back--of some one rising to his feet.

In sudden consternation, she stopped. For one instant she glanced behind her, contemplating flight; the next, a faint exclamation of surprise--the merest audible breath-escaped her; and her figure became motionless.

The occupant of the room came quietly round the screen; and in the uncertain light of the candles she recognised Gore.

The position was unusual; the moment was unusual. For the first time since the night at the Palazzo Ugochini, they were entirely alone--for the first time since the night at the Palazzo Ugochini they looked at each other without the commentary of other eyes--without the atmosphere of conventional things.

Involuntarily, inevitably, their eyes met. Clodagh looked into his; and in the contact of glances it seemed that a miracle came to pass. By power of that magnetism that indisputably exists--the magnetism that draws certain natures irrevocably together, although circumstance and time may delay their union--she saw the gleam of comprehension, of question, of acknowledgment spring from his eyes to hers; and she knew, without the need of words, that he stood within the circle of her power, that--whether with, or against his will--his personality claimed response from hers.

She did not move; for it seemed to her, in that instant of understanding, that her life and his were mysteriously suspended. Her heart beat extraordinarily fast, yet her mental vision was curiously clear. By the light of her recent misgivings, by the light of her sudden confidence she seemed to see and to read herself and him with a strange and vivid clearness. Some power, tangible yet invincibly compelling, drew them together. In the personal scheme of things there were only two persons--he and she. Beyond the walls of the music-room life swept forward as relentlessly, as rapidly as before; but inside the walls of the music-room there were only he and she.

Almost unconsciously she took a step towards him.

"Do you remember that night in Venice?" she asked. "The night you said all the things that sounded so hard, and hurt so much, and--and were so true?"

She did not know why she had spoken. She did not know how she had framed her words. She only knew that, exalted by the consciousness of great good within her reach, she was moved to dare greatly.

It was the moment of her life. The moment when all social barriers of prejudice and of etiquette fell away before a tremendous self-knowledge. She realised in that space of time that her thoughts of Gore--her attraction towards him--her reluctant admiration--had been insensibly leading up to this instant of action; that on the evening when they stood together on the terrace of the hotel at Venice, and watched the night steal in from the lagoon, it had been irrevocably written in the book of fate that they should one day look into each other's hearts--for happiness or sorrow.

"Do you remember that night in Venice?" she said again, almost below her breath. And in the pause that followed the whispered words, the most wonderful--the most wholly perfect--incident of her life occurred. The voice that had power to chill or stir her, spoke her name; the hands she had believed closed to her for ever were held out towards her. Gore came slowly forward across the shadowed room.

"I do remember," he said. "I have never forgotten, I never shall forget."