As Lillian came closer, the meaning of her manner became clearer to him.  She talked incessantly, laughing now and then, but her eyes were never quiet.  These skimmed the length of the corridor, then glanced over the heads crowded in the door-way.

“I’ll have something quite sweet, Geoffrey,” she was saying to the man beside her, as she came within hearing.  “You know what I like—­a sort of snowflake wrapped up in sugar.”  As she said the words her glance wandered.  Loder saw it rest uninterestedly on a boy a yard or two in front of him, then move to the man over whose head he gazed, then lift itself inevitably to his face.

The glance was quick and direct.  He saw the look of recognition spring across it; he saw her move forward suddenly as the crowd in the corridor parted to let her pass.  Then he saw what seemed to him a miracle.

Her whole expression altered, her lips parted, and she colored with annoyance.  She looked like a spoiled child who, seeing a bonbon-box, opens it—­to find it empty.

As the press about the door-way melted to give her passage, the red-haired man in front of Loder was the first to take advantage of the space.  “Jove!  Lillian,” he said, moving forward, “you look as if you expected Chilcote to be somebody else, and are disappointed to find he’s only himself!” He laughed delightedly at his own joke.

The words were exactly the tonic that Lillian needed.  She smiled her usual undisturbed smile as she turned her eyes upon him.

“My dear Leonard, you’re using your eye-glass; when that happens you’re never responsible for what you see.”  Her words came more slowly and with a touch of languid amusement.  Her composure was suddenly restored.

Then for the first time Loder changed his position.  Moved by an impulse he made no effort to dissect, he stepped back to Eve’s side and slipped his arm through hers—­successfully concealing his left hand.

The warmth of her skin through her long glove thrilled him unexpectedly.  His impulse had been one of self-defence, but the result was of a different character.  At the quick contact the wish to fight for—­to hold and defend—­the position that had grown so dear woke in renewed force.  With a new determination he turned again towards Lillian.

“I caught the same impression—­without an eyeglass,” he said.  “Why did you look like that?” He asked the question steadily and with apparent carelessness, though, through it all, his reason stood aghast—­his common-sense cried aloud that it was impossible for the eyes that had seen his face in admiration, in love, in contempt, to fail now in recognition.  The air seemed breathless while he spoke and waited.  His impression of Lillian was a mere shimmering of gold dress and gold hair; all that he was really conscious of was the pressure of his hand on Eve’s arm and the warmth of her skin through the soft glove.  Then, abruptly, the mist lifted.  He saw Lillian’s eyes—­indifferent, amused, slightly contemptuous; and a second later he heard her voice.