I felt a pride and joy in my strength such as a woman feels, I suppose, in her beauty when she surveys it in the mirror—­a wild elation, a sense of triumph, as she realises in it her power.  The thought of the approaching meeting with Viola danced before my mind, filling it with superb delight.  All my veins seemed filled with fire instead of blood.  My limbs and muscles flew to do the bidding of the eager, impatient brain.

I drove to Bletchner’s Hotel and enquired for Madame Lonsdale, and was immediately shewn up to her suite of apartments.  The salon I entered was empty.  A door faced me at the other end.  It was closed.  My heart leapt up as I saw it.  Was she there—­just on the other side?  The salon was lighted with shaded electric lamps and furnished and hung entirely in white, so that there was that dazzling effect of light I knew she always loved.  I walked up and down in short quick turns, longing to go up to that tantalising door and knock, but holding myself back.

After a moment it opened and she came through it towards me.  For one second before I rushed forward to clasp her in my arms, I stood to gaze at her, and the sweetness, the enchanting glamour of the vision was borne in upon me and locked itself into my memory for ever.  She was in white, some soft white tissue that fell round her closely, edged with silver that seemed like moonlight on white clouds, and there was a little silver on her shoulders and round the breast that seemed like moonlight upon snow.  Her fair hair shone in the blaze of light, her face raised to mine was pale and smiling, with a wonderful lustre in the azure eyes.

She seemed, as ever, the dream, the vision, the ideal, the unattainable divinity man’s soul continually strives after.

A moment more and she was in my arms.  Her physical semblance was mine, in which her spirit walked and moved, and I was the owner and conqueror of that at least.

“Trevor dear, be gentle!” she murmured in laughing remonstrance, but her white arms did not unlock from my neck nor her soft lips move far from mine.

“How happy I am now,” she said, sinking into my embrace, “and how well you look, Trevor, how splendid!  So strong and gloriously full of life!”

“I wonder I do,” I answered, “after this cruel year you gave me.  How could you leave me as you did while I was asleep beside you, and what was your reason?  You will have to tell me now.”

“I believe you would be happier if I did not, if you just trusted me and never asked to know,” she answered, smiling back at me.  “Are we not perfectly happy now?  You have me again; look at me, am I just the same as when we parted?”

I looked at her intently, eagerly, my eyes drinking in all the perfect vision before me, each slim outline of the body, lying back now on the couch where we both were sitting, all the delicacy of the transparent skin, the smooth white forehead with its fine, straight-drawn eyebrows, the lovely eyes searching mine.  Yes, I had lost nothing of my possession, and there seemed rather something added to that inner light and that wonderful look of intellect and power that shone through the face.