Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/160

148 After a little, it occurred to me again to go and take a look at Rayne's house. So I asked the next policeman I saw where Balmoral Street was, and learnt that that it was on this side of the Park, and, more particularly, close by Lancaster Gate, for which I had better ask. That was all I wanted at present. I set off again, and was in Maida Vale before I was aware of it. I had no idea of going to see Rayne to-day: I only wished to look at the house.

I went on seriously enough, and began to think about Rayne—Where she was now and what she was doing?—somehow as if I had wondered thus about some other woman some time and somewhere; till a faint far-away tremulousness entered into me and was perceived.

I came sharply round an area-railed corner, and beheld … a low carriage, two horses, two footmen, the pillars of an exit into the street, a lady just out of the open door—passing to the top step—descending—Rayne! I stood still.

Some one followed. Rayne was on the pavement, making for the low carriage door, now held open. She stopped a moment, half turned. And the some one following was in her view and mine. It was the mondain en villégiature: I knew him at once. But Rayne's face was all to me; and yet I could not see it properly. Then our eyes met. Somehow or other I was moving to her with my hat in my hand, and she had said: 'Bertram!' and I had stood still again.

Her face seemed to me, as it were worn, but filled with the light of steadfastness, and her eyes were quiet and deep. I had seen, not her face, but her face's form, and, as it were the light of it, before, and this memory was on me now almost as in the dim low distance. I cannot say what either she said, or he or I for a little; not that I was bewildered by their presence and its thoughts within me, but that this memory of the likeness to the light of her face kept me from them.

At last I had shaken hands with the mondain, and she was sitting in the carriage and we two, standing by the low opened carriage door, were talking together.