She saw, not this splendid saloon, but a shabby small room in
an old bush house--the walls not panelled with paintings by R.A.s and
starred with clusters of electric lights, but with wreaths of homely
evergreens and smelly kerosene lamps. And amid the happy throng that
jostled for room to dance there, a girl and a young man, newly
betrothed, anticipating an immortal paradise in each other's arms.

And she looked up, and saw Claud Dalzell watching her.

He was horribly aged--illness, it seemed--and had grown quite white--
that splendid lover with whom she had danced, as no girl here knew how
to dance, in the golden prime of everything! Their eyes met, and there
must have been in both pairs something that neither of them had seen
before. He crossed to her side at once, and she did not freeze him when
he got there.

"How do you do? I have been wondering if you were going to recognise
me."

"How do you do? I didn't know you were here. I never saw you until this
moment."

"I have been standing there for ten minutes."

"I did not notice. I was thinking--" "You were--deeply. I was trying
to guess what you were thinking of."

"I wonder, did you?"

"I wonder. Was it, by any chance"--he dropped his voice--"Five