So there had been other gentlemen, other secretaries!  He thanked her with a nod and a smile, and hurried pattering downstairs in a neat blue suit, black silk socks and a pair of bright new pumps, Mr. Skale having told him not to dress.  The phrase “day or night,” meanwhile, struck him as significant and peculiar.  He remembered it later.  At the moment he merely noted that it added one more to the puzzling items that caused his bewilderment.

V

Before he had gone very far, however, there came another—­crowningly perplexing.  For he was halfway down the darkened passage, making for the hall that glimmered beyond like the mouth of a cave, when, without the smallest warning, he became suddenly conscious that something attractive and utterly delicious had invaded the stream of his being.  It came from nowhere—­inexplicably, and at first it took the form of a naked sensation of delight, keen as a thrill of boyhood days.  There passed into him very swiftly something that satisfied.  “I mean, whatever it was,” he says, “I couldn’t have asked or wanted more of it.  It was all there, complete, supreme, sufficient.”  And the same instant he saw close beside him, in the comparative gloom of the narrow corridor, a vivid, vibrating picture of a girl’s face, pale as marble, of flower-like beauty, with dark voluminous hair and large grey eyes that met his own from behind a wavering net of eyelashes.  Down to the shoulders he saw her.

Erect and motionless she stood against the wall to let him pass—­this slim young girl whose sudden and unexpected presence had so electrified him.  Her eyes followed him like those of a picture, but she neither bowed nor curtseyed, and the only movement she made was the slight turning of the head and eyes as he went by.  It was extraordinarily effective, this silent and delightful introduction, for swift as lightning, and with lightning’s terrific and incalculable surety of aim, she leapt into his heart with the effect of a blinding and complete possession.

It was, of course, he realized, the niece—­the fourth member of the household, and the first clear thought to disentangle itself from the resultant jumble of emotions was his instinctive wonder what her name might be.  How was this delightful apparition called?  This was the question that ran and danced in his blood.  In another minute he felt sure he would discover it.  It must begin (he felt sure of that) with an M.

He did not pause, or alter his pace.  He made no sign of recognition.  Their eyes swallowed each other for a brief moment as he passed—­and then he was pattering with quick, excited steps down the passage beyond, and the girl was left out of sight in the shadows behind him.  He did not even turn back to look, for in some amazing sense she seemed to move on beside him, as though some portion of her had merged into his being.  He carried her on with him.  Some sweet and marvelous interchange they had undergone together.  He felt strangely blessed, soothed inwardly, made complete, and more than twice on the way down the name he knew must belong to her almost sprang up and revealed itself—­yet never quite.  He knew it began with M, even with Mir—­but could get nothing more.  The rest evaded him.  He divined only a portion of the name.  He had seen only a portion of her form.