After dinner, Elizabeth waited for Anderson in the magnificent gallery upstairs where the guests of the evening party were beginning to gather, and the musicians were arriving.  When he came she played her usual fairy godmother’s part; introducing him to this person and that, creating an interest in him and in his work, wherever it might be useful to him.  It was understood that she had met him in Canada, and that he had been useful to the poor delicate brother.  No other idea entered in.  That she could have any interest in him for herself would have seemed incredible to this world looking on.

“I must slip away,” said Anderson, presently, in her ear; “I promised to look in on Philip if possible.  And to-morrow I fear I shall be too busy.”

And he went on to tell her his own news of the day—­that the Conference would be over sooner than he supposed, and that he must get back to Ottawa without delay to report to the Canadian Ministry.  That afternoon he had written to take his passage for the following week.

It seemed to her that he faltered in telling her; and, as for her, the crowd of uniformed or jewelled figures around them became to her, as he spoke, a mere meaningless confusion.  She was only conscious of him, and of the emotion which at last he could not hide.

She quietly said that she would soon follow him to Portman Square, and he went away.  A few minutes afterwards, Elizabeth said good-night to her hostess, and emerged upon the gallery running round the fine Italianate hall which occupied the centre of the house.  Hundreds of people were hanging over the balustrading of the gallery, watching the guests coming and going on the marble staircase which occupied the centre of the hall.

Elizabeth’s slight figure slowly descended.

“Pretty creature!” said one old General, looking down upon her.  “You remember—­she was a Gaddesden of Martindale.  She has been a widow a long time now.  Why doesn’t someone carry her off?”

Meanwhile Elizabeth, as she went down, dreamily, from step to step, her eyes bent apparrently upon the crowd which filled all the spaces of the great pictorial house, was conscious of one of those transforming impressions which represent the sudden uprush and consummation in the mind of some obscure and long-continued process.

One moment, she saw the restless scene below her, the diamonds, the uniforms, the blaze of electric light, the tapestries on the walls, the handsome faces of men and women; the next, it had been wiped out; the prairies unrolled before her; she beheld a green, boundless land invaded by a mirage of sunny water; scattered through it, the white farms; above it, a vast dome of sky, with summer clouds in glistening ranks climbing the steep of blue; and at the horizon’s edge, a line of snow-peaks.  Her soul leapt within her.  It was as though she felt the freshness of the prairie wind upon her cheek, while the call of that distant land—­Anderson’s country—­its simpler life, its undetermined fates, beat through her heart.