“Do you suppose that type will ever pass?” he asked.

She met his inquiring look with eyes that were golden in the coloured light.  “Do you suppose that women will ever mean more to men than pegs on which to hang their sentiments?  Alice and her kind will always be convenient substitutes for a man’s admiration of himself.”

“Which he calls love, you think?”

“Which he probably calls by the most romantic name that occurs to him.  Have you seen Patty?”

Before he could reply, she turned away to speak to some one who was approaching on her other side; and a minute later, with a joyous smile at Stephen, she floated off in the dance.  Was she really as happy as she looked, or was it only a gallant pretence, nothing more?

He had not found Patty yet; and while he stood there, with his eyes eagerly searching the revolving throng for her face, he had a singular visitation, a poignant sense that some rare and beautiful event was eluding him in its flight, a feeling that the wings of the moment had brushed him like feathers as it sped by into experience.  Once or twice in his life before he had received this impression; first in his boyhood when he rose one morning at sunrise to go hunting, and again in France after he had come out of the trenches.  Now it was so vivid that it brought with it a sensation of fear, as if happiness itself were escaping his pursuit.  He felt that his heart was burning with impatience, and there was a persistent hammering in his ears as if he had been running.  What finding her would mean, what the future would bring, he did not know, he did not even seek to discover.  All he understood was that the old indifference, the old apathy, the old subjective, tormenting egoism, had given place to a consuming interest, an impassioned delight.  He felt only that he was thirsty for life, and that he must drink deep to be satisfied.

Then, suddenly, it seemed to him that the music grew softer and slower, and the wind-blown throng faded from him into a rosy haze.  From the centre of the room, borne round and round like a flower on a stream, he saw her face and her romantic eyes looking at him with a deep expectancy that brought a pang to his heart.  Her head was thrown back; the short black hair blew about her like mist; and her cheeks and lips were glowing with geranium red.  At that instant she was not only the girl he loved—­she was youth and spring and adventure.

The impatience had died now; the burning of his heart was cooled; and life had grown miraculously simple and easy.  He knew at last what he wanted.  His strength of purpose, his will to live had returned to him; and he felt that he was cured; that he was completely himself for the first time since his return.  The dark depression, the shadows of the prison, were behind him now.  Straight ahead were the roads of that hidden country, and for the first time he saw them flushed with an April bloom.