“Don’t be a goose!” she exclaimed at last.  “Of course you want your reward, and of course you’ll have it, some day!  You’ve always lived with your head partly in the clouds, and it’s always been my task to pull you down to earth.  I suppose I shall have to do the same again, but to-night I haven’t patience.  I feel suddenly gay.  You are so nice-looking, Philip, but you’d look ten times nicer still if you’d only smile once or twice and look as though you were glad.”

The whole thing was a nightmare to him.  The horror of it was in his blood, yet he did his best to obey.  Plain speaking just then was impossible.  He drank glass after glass of wine and called for liqueurs.  She held his fingers for a moment under the table.

“Oh, Philip,” she whispered, “can’t you forget that you have ever been a school-teacher, dear?  We are only human, and did suffer so.  You know,” she went on, “you were made for the things that are coming to us.  You’ve improved already, ever so much.  I like your clothes and the way you carry yourself.  But you look—­oh, so sad and so far away all the time!  When I came to your rooms, at my first glimpse of you I knew that you were miserable.  We must alter all that, dear.  Tell me how it is that with all your success you haven’t been happy?”

“Memories!” he answered harshly.  “Only a few hours before you came, I was in hell!”

“Then you had better make up your mind,” she told him firmly, “that you are going to climb up out of there, and when you’re out, you’re going to stay out.  You can’t alter the past.  You can’t alter even the smallest detail of its setting.  Just as inevitably as our lives come and go, so what has happened is finished with, unchangeable.  It is only a weak person who would spoil the present and the future, brooding.  You used not to be weak, Philip.”

“I don’t think that I am, really,” he said.  “I am moody, though, and that’s almost as bad.  The sight of you brought it all back.  And that fellow Dane—­I’ve been frightened of him, Beatrice.”

“Well, you needn’t be any longer,” she declared.  “What you want is some one with you all the time who understands you, some one to drive back those other thoughts when they come to worry you.  It is really a very good thing for you, dear, that I came out to New York.  Mr. Dane is going to be very disappointed when I tell him that I never saw you before in my life....  Don’t you love the music?  Listen to that waltz.  That was written for happy people, Philip.  I adore this place.  I suppose we shall find others that we like better, as time goes on, but I shall always think of this evening.  It is the beginning of my task, too, Philip, with you—­for you.  What has really happened, dear?  I can’t realise anything.  I feel as though the gates of some great prison had been thrown wide-open, and everything there was to long for in life was just there, within reach, waiting.  I am glad, so much gladder than I should have imagined possible.  It’s wonderful to have you again.  I didn’t even feel that I missed you so much, but I know now what it was that made life so appalling.  Tell me, am I still nice to look at?”