And that—­if she had only let me—­was what I tried to do.

I remember vividly everything that passed in that interview, but I do not know how to reproduce it, how to give anything like an impression of the marvellous thing it was, or that it turned into under her hands.  It ought, you see, to have been so ugly, so humiliating, so absolutely intolerable for both of us.  And it wasn’t.  She took it from me, at the end, and held it up, as it were a little way out of my grasp; and before I knew where I was, with some sudden twist or turn she had brought beauty out of it.  Clear and exquisite beauty.

I found her in her room at the pension.  It was at the back, on the ground floor; and had long windows opening into a little high-walled garden.  The room, I remember, was rather dingy and stuffed up with furniture.  Large Flemish pieces, bureaus, chests and cabinets stood against the walls.  There was a bed behind the door; she had put her travelling-rug over it.  And there was a washstand in an alcove with a curtain hung across it; and some of her coats and gowns hung behind another curtain in a corner, and some were on hooks on the door.  And her little trunk was on the floor by the foot of the bed.  And her shoes stood by the stove.

Somehow, when I saw these things—­especially the shoes—­my heart melted inside me with a tenderness that was infinitely more painful than the rather austere disapproval of her which I had relied on for support.

I was prepared, as I said, for a cowed and frightened Viola, or for Viola in a mood at least in keeping with the poignant and somewhat humbling pathos of her surroundings; but not for the Viola I found.

The garcon of the pension closed the door of this room in my face as he went in with my card to inquire whether she would receive me.  I thought, “If she refuses I shall have to insist; and that will be unpleasant.”

But she didn’t refuse.  On the other side of the door I heard a subdued, but curiously reassuring cry.

She had been sitting outside the open window.  Her chair was on the flagged path of the garden.  As I came in she had risen and was standing in the window, with the intense blue darkness of the garden behind her and the light of the room on her face.  She was smiling in a serene and candid joy.  For one second I imagined that she had not read the name on the card and that she thought I was Jevons.  And then I must have looked away quite steadily so as not to see her shock of recognition; for her voice recalled me.

“Wally—­how ripping!  However did you get here?”

I don’t know what I said.  I probably didn’t say anything.  The sheer surprise of it so staggered me that I must have muttered or grunted or choked instead.  But I know I took her hand and did my best to smile back at her with the stiff mouth she noticed later.

She went on:  “I am glad to see you.  Have you had any dinner?”