Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/307

 characteristic of her, something of his old manner came back. He guided her quickly along the corridor, and opened a door.

Thank Heaven, there was not so much light here, though the room was ugly enough. Terry sighed with relief in the dimness that toned soberly with olive-green walls and curtains.

"I think it was partly the horrid crimson in there, which got on my nerves. Blood colour!" she said with a little shiver; then regretted her words, and was stabbed by the answering look of pain in Sir Ian's death-weary face.

"Oh, Ian, whatever I do and say to-night seems wrong," she cried impulsively. "But my heart is right, and it brought me here to you. It has been all to-day and yesterday exactly as if you were calling me. I could hear your voice."

"The voice of my soul has been calling you," he said. "Yet I would not have brought you here to me, in body. I am not quite so selfish as that."

"If you had not wanted me—or needed me—your soul would not have called, nor mine answered as it has."

They looked at each other. Spirit spoke to spirit, from her eyes to his, from his again to hers. She read his thought, as she might have counted shells far down under water, clear as glass.

"I know now why you asked me to write you, as a last favour, and not to stop a night in London. You