She stood still with presentiment.

“What is his name?” she asked.

“Mr. Erwin,” said the man.

Still she hesitated.  In the strange state in which she found herself that day, the supernatural itself had seemed credible.  And yet—­she was not prepared.

“I beg pardon, madam,” the butler was saying, “perhaps I shouldn’t—?”

“Yes, yes, you should,” she interrupted him, and pushed past him up the stairs.  At the drawing-room door she paused—­he was unaware of her presence.  And he had not changed!  She wondered why she had expected him to change.  Even the glow of his newly acquired fame was not discernible behind his well-remembered head.  He seemed no older—­and no younger.  And he was standing with his hands behind his back gazing in simple, silent appreciation at the big tapestry nearest the windows.

“Peter,” she said, in a low voice.

He turned quickly, and then she saw the glow.  But it was the old glow, not the new—­the light m which her early years had been spent.

“What a coincidence!” she exclaimed, as he took her hand.

“Coincidence?”

“It was only this morning that I was reading in the newspaper all sorts of nice things about you.  It made me feel like going out and telling everybody you were an old friend of mine.”  Still holding his fingers, she pushed him away from her at arm’s length, and looked at him.  “What does it feel like to be famous, and have editorials about one’s self in the New York newspapers?”

He laughed, and released his hands somewhat abruptly.

“It seems as strange to me, Honora, as it does to you.”

“How unkind of you, Peter!” she exclaimed.

She felt his eyes upon her, and their searching, yet kindly and humorous rays seemed to illuminate chambers within her which she would have kept in darkness:  which she herself did not wish to examine.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said a little breathlessly, flinging her muff and boa on a chair.  “Sit there, where I can look at you, and tell me why you didn’t let me know you were coming to New York.”

He glanced a little comically at the gilt and silk arm-chair which she designated, and then at her; and she smiled and coloured, divining the humour in his unspoken phrase.

“For a great man,” she declared, “you are absurd.”

He sat down.  In spite of his black clothes and the lounging attitude he habitually assumed, with his knees crossed—­he did not appear incongruous in a seat that would have harmonized with the flowing robes of the renowned French Cardinal himself.  Honora wondered why.  He impressed her to-day as force—­tremendous force in repose, and yet he was the same Peter.  Why was it?  Had the clipping that even then lay in her bosom effected this magic change?  He had intimated as much, but she denied it fiercely.

She rang for tea.

“You haven’t told me why you came to New York,” she said.