CHAPTER XXVI

IN WHICH A DISAPPOINTED LOVER RECEIVES A MULTITUDE OF LESSONS

Dacier welted at the station, a good figure of a sentinel over his luggage and a spy for one among the inpouring passengers.  Tickets had been confidently taken, the private division of the carriages happily secured.  On board the boat she would be veiled.  Landed on French soil, they threw off disguises, breasted the facts.  And those?  They lightened.  He smarted with his eagerness.

He had come well in advance of the appointed time, for he would not have had her hang about there one minute alone.

Strange as this adventure was to a man of prominent station before the world, and electrical as the turning-point of a destiny that he was given to weigh deliberately and far-sightedly, Diana’s image strung him to the pitch of it.  He looked nowhere but ahead, like an archer putting hand for his arrow.

Presently he compared his watch and the terminus clock.  She should now be arriving.  He went out to meet her and do service.  Many cabs and carriages were peered into, couples inspected, ladies and their maids, wives and their husbands—­an August exodus to the Continent.  Nowhere the starry she.  But he had a fund of patience.  She was now in some block of the streets.  He was sure of her, sure of her courage.  Tony and recreancy could not go together.  Now that he called her Tony, she was his close comrade, known; the name was a caress and a promise, breathing of her, as the rose of sweetest earth.  He counted it to be a month ere his family would have wind of the altered position of his affairs, possibly a year to the day of his making the dear woman his own in the eyes of the world.  She was dear past computation, womanly, yet quite unlike the womanish woman, unlike the semi-males courteously called dashing, unlike the sentimental.  His present passion for her lineaments, declared her surpassingly beautiful, though his critical taste was rather for the white statue that gave no warmth.  She had brains and ardour, she had grace and sweetness, a playful petulancy enlivening our atmosphere, and withal a refinement, a distinction, not to be classed; and justly might she dislike the being classed.  Her humour was a perennial refreshment, a running well, that caught all the colours of light; her wit studded the heavens of the recollection of her.  In his heart he felt that it was a stepping down for the brilliant woman to give him her hand; a condescension and an act of valour.  She who always led or prompted when they conversed, had now in her generosity abandoned the lead and herself to him, and she deserved his utmost honouring.

But where was she?  He looked at his watch, looked at the clock.  They said the same:  ten minutes to the moment of the train’s departure.