Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/338

 a swinging stride, and as he approached his large face beamed with satisfaction. He turned his head from side to side with a patronizing air, an air which to Lily must have been startlingly familiar. Even twenty years could not have dissipated the memory of it. It was this which identified him beyond all doubt. He beamed to right and to left. His whole figure betrayed an enormous self-satisfaction. It was impossible any longer to doubt. The man was the Governor. His success was written upon a face now grown heavy and dark.

When he had advanced to within a few paces of Lily's corner, she rose and moved toward him. Only once did she hesitate and then at the very moment he passed by her. Putting out her hand in a furtive movement, she withdrew it hastily. He passed and was on his way to disappearing once more in the throng. For a second she leaned against the wall and then, as if she could no longer resist the temptation, she moved quickly forward and touched his shoulder.

"Henry," she said softly and waited.

The Governor turned and for an instant his face was clouded by a look of bewilderment. Then slowly, almost breathlessly, he recovered himself. The beaming look vanished completely, replaced by an expression of the greatest gravity.

"Lily . . . !" he said. "Lily Shane. . . . For the love of God!"

She drew him aside out of the path of the procession.

"Then you remember me?" she said with a faint, amused smile. "Twenty years is not such a long time."

Again he looked at her. "Lily . . . Lily Shane!" he said. And he took her hand and pressed it with a savage, startled warmth.

"I knew you," she said. "I knew you at once. . . . There are some things about a person which never change . . . little things which are the person . . . not much . . . a gesture perhaps. . . . You were unmistakable."

And when he had recovered a little from his astonishment, he managed to say, "It's the last place I'd expect to see you."

Lily laughed at him, in a fashion which must have destroyed suddenly the wall of twenty years. It was a fashion of laughing which belonged to her alone. It was provocative, faintly