"Why," he asked, "why can you look like that, and yet be so different?
That look in your eyes makes you the most beautiful and wonderful thing
in this world, and yet..."

He laughed softly to himself. He was uttering his thoughts aloud, and
the unromantic waiter stared at him.

"Beg your pardon, sir?" he asked.

"That's all right!" Hugh said. "What won the three-thirty?"

"I don't think there was any racing to-day, sir," the man said.

He went away, not completely satisfied as to this visitor's sanity, and
Hugh drifted back into dreams and memories.

"You are very wonderful," he said to himself, "yet you made me very
angry; you hurt me and made me furious. I called you ungenerous, and I
meant it, and so you were. Yet when you look at me with your eyes like
that and the colour in your cheeks, I can't find one word to say against
you."

He went to the theatre that night. It was a successful play. All London
was talking of it, but Hugh Alston never remembered what it was about.
He was thinking of a girl with cold disdainful looks that changed
suddenly to softness and tenderness. She sat beside him as she had sat
opposite to him at dinner. On the stage the actors talked meaningless
stuff; nothing was real, save this girl beside him.