He returned with tea and cake which he set before her on a little table that he had apparently secured beforehand for the purpose.  “I am sure you must be ravenous,” he said, in those high-bred, somewhat insolent accents of his.

“I am,” Dinah admitted frankly.

“Then let me see you satisfy your hunger!” he said, seating himself in the corner he had reserved.

“Oh, but not alone!” she protested.  “You—­you must have some too.”

He laughed.  “No.  I am going to smoke—­with your permission.  It will do me more good.”

“Oh, pray do!” said Dinah, embarrassed still but strangely elated.  “It makes me feel rather greedy, that’s all.”

“I am greedy too,” he told her, his blue eyes still upon her vivid, sparkling face.  “And—­always with your permission—­I am going to indulge my greed.”

She did not understand him, but prudence restrained her from telling him so.  Seated as she was he was the only person in the vestibule whom she could see, her back being turned to all beside.  She wondered, again with that delightful yet half-startled thrill, if his meaning were in any way connected with this fact.  He certainly absorbed the whole of her attention, if that were what he wanted.  Her hunger faded completely into the background.

He lighted a cigarette and began to smoke.  The space beyond them was full of moving figures and laughing voices; but the turmoil scarcely reached Dinah.  An invisible barrier seemed to shut them off from all the rest.  They were not merely aloof; they were alone, and a curiously intimate touch pervaded their solitude.  She felt her spirit start in quivering response to the call of his, just as the night before when she had floated with him above the clouds.  What was happening to her she had not the least idea, but the consciousness of his near presence pulsed magnetically through and through her.  Scott’s brief advice of the morning was scattered from her memory like feathers before the wind.  She had no memory.  She lived only in this burning splendid ardour of a moment.

She drank her tea mechanically, finding nothing enigmatic in his silence.  The direct look of his blue eyes discomfited her strangely, but it was a sublime discomfiture—­the discomfiture of the moth around the flame.  She longed to meet it, but did not wholly dare.  With veiled glances she yielded to the attraction, not yet bold enough for complete surrender.

He spoke at last, and she started.

“Well?  Am I forgiven?”

The nonchalant enquiry sent the blood in another hot wave to her cheeks.  Had she ever presumed to be angry with this godlike person?

“For what?” she asked, her voice very low.

He leaned towards her.  “Did I only fancy that by some evil chance I had offended you?”

She kept her eyes lowered.  “I thought you were the offended one,” she said.

“I?” She caught the note of surprise in his voice, and it sent a very curious little sense of shame through her.