Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/228

216 “Dear old cathedral,” said Miss Grammont, a little irrelevantly. She had an air of having concluded something that to Sir Richmond seemed scarcely to have begun. She stood looking at the great dark façade edged with moonlight for some moments, and then turned towards the hotel, which showed a pink-lit window.

“I wonder,” she said, “if Belinda is still up. And what she will think when I tell her of the final extinction of Mr. Lake. I think she rather looked forward to being the intimate friend, secrets and everything, of Mrs. Gunter Lake.”

Sir Richmond woke up at dawn and he woke out of an extraordinary dream. He was saying to Miss Grammont: “There is no other marriage than the marriage of true minds. There is no other marriage than the marriage of true minds.” He saw her as he had seen her the evening before, light and cool, coming towards him in the moonlight from the hotel. But also in the inconsistent way of dreams he was very close to her kind, faintly smiling face, and his eyes were wet with tears and he was kissing her hand. “My dear wife and mate,” he was saying, and suddenly he was kissing her cool lips.

He woke up and stared at his dream, which faded out only very slowly before the fresh sun-