Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/183

Rh all. . . . But she put the thought away hastily. "I may be a vain fool," she said, "but I won't be fooled by my vanity twice over."

And she kissed Tom's portrait and went to bed.

Dick went home in a heavenly haze of happiness—so he told himself as he went. When he woke up at about three o'clock, and began to analyse his sensations, he had cooled enough to call it an intoxication of pleasurable emotion. At three in the morning, if ever, the gilt is off the ginger-bread.

Dick lay on his back, his hands clenched at his sides, and, gazing open-eyed into the darkness, he saw many things. He saw all the old friendship: the easy, jolly life in those rooms, the meeting with Harriet Harcourt—it was at a fancy-ball, and she wore the white-and-black dress of a Beardsley lady; he remembered the contrast of the dress with her eyes and mouth.

He saw the days when his thoughts turned more and more to every chance of meeting her, as though each had been his only chance of life. He saw the Essex Court sitting-room as it had looked on the night when Tom had announced