Glory stood off from the looking glass and looked. “Am I really so nice?” she thought; and then she remembered John Storm again, and had half a mind to tear down her glorious curls and go straight away to bed.
She went to the ball instead, and, being there, she forgot all about her misgivings. The light, the colour, the brilliance, the perfume transported her to an enchanted world which she had never entered before. She could not control her delight in it. Everything surprised her, everything delighted her, everything amused her—she was the very soul of girlish joy. The dark-brown spot on her eye shone out with a coquettish light never seen in it until now, and the warble in her voice was like the music of a happy bird. Her high spirits were infectious—her lighthearted gaiety communicated itself to everybody. The men who might not dance with her were smiling at the mere sight of the sunshine in her face, and it was even whispered about that the President of the College of Surgeons, who opened the ball, had said that her proper place was not there—a girl like that young Irish nurse would do honour to a higher assembly.
In that enchanted world of music and light and bright and happy faces Glory lost all sense of time; but two hours had passed when Polly Love, whose eyes had turned again and again to the door, tugged at her sleeve and whispered: “They've come at last! There they are—there—directly opposite to us. Keep your next dance, dear. They'll come across presently.”
Glory looked where Polly had directed, and, seeing again the face she had seen in the window of the Foreign Office, something remote and elusive once more stirred in her memory. But it was gone in a moment, and she was back in that world of wonders, when a voice which she knew and yet did not know, like a voice that called to her as she was awakening out of a sleep, said:
“Glory, don't you remember me? Have you forgotten me, Glory?”
It was her friend of the catechism class—her companion of the adventure in the boat. Their hands met in a long hand-clasp with the gallop of feeling that is too swift for thought.
“Ah, I thought you would recognise me! How delightful!” said Drake.
“And you knew me again?” said Glory.
“Instantly—at first sight almost.”
“Really! It's strange, though. Such a long, long time—ten years at least! I must have changed since then.”
“You have,” said Drake; “you've changed very much.”
“Indeed now! Am I really so much changed for all? I've grown older, of course.”
“Oh, terribly older,” said Drake.
“How wrong of me! But you have changed a good deal, too. You were only a boy in jackets then.”
“And you were only a girl in short frocks.”
They both laughed, and then Drake said, “I'm so glad we've changed together!”
“Are you?” said Glory.
“Why, yes,” said Drake; “for if you had changed and I hadn't——”
“But what nonsense we're talking!” said Glory; and they both laughed again.
Then they told each other what had happened in that infinite cycle of time which had spun round since they parted. Glory had not much to narrate; her life had been empty. She had been in the Isle of Man all along, had come to London only recently, and was now a probationer-nurse at Martha's Vineyard. Drake had gone to Harrow and thence to Oxford, and, being a man of artistic leanings, had wished to take up music, but his father had seen no career in it; so he had submitted—he had entered the subterranean catacombs of public life, and was secretary to one of the Ministers. All this he talked of lightly, as became a young man of the world to whom great things were of small account.
“Glory,” said Polly, at her elbow, “the waltz is going to begin.”
The band was preluding. Drake claimed the dance, and Glory was astonished to find that she had it free (she had kept it expressly).
When the waltz was over he gave her his arm and led her into the circular corridor to talk and to cool. His manners were perfect, and his voice, so soft and yet so manly, increased the charm. In passing out of the hot dancing room she threw her handkerchief over her head, and, with the hand that was at liberty, held its ends under her chin. She wished him to look at her and see what change this had made; so she said, quite innocently:
“And now let me look at you again, sir!”
He recognised the dark-brown spot on her eye, and he could feel her arm through her thin print dress.
“You've told me a good deal,” he said, “but you haven't said a syllable about the most important thing of all.”
“And pray what is that?” said she.
“How many times have you fallen in love since I saw you last?”
“Good gracious, what a question!” said Glory.
His audacity was delightful. There was something so gracious and yet so masterful about him.
“Do you remember the day you carried me off—eloped with me, you know?” said Drake.
“I? How charming of me! But when was that, I wonder?” said Glory.
“Never mind; say, do you remember?”
“Well, if I do? What a pair of little geese we must have been in those days!”
“I'm not so sure of that—now,'” said he.
“You didn't seem very keen about me then, as far as I can remember,” said she.
“Didn't I?” said he. “What a silly young fool I must have been!”
They laughed again. She could not keep her arm still, and he could almost feel its dimpled elbow.
“And do you remember the gentleman who rescued us?” she said.
“You mean the tall, dark young man who kept hugging and kissing you in the yacht?”
“Did he?”
“Do you forget that kind of thing, then?”
“It was very sweet of him. But he's in the Church now, and the chaplain of our hospital.”
“What a funny little romantic world it is, to be sure!”
“Yes; it's like poetry, isn't it?” she answered.
Lord Robert came up to introduce Drake to Polly (who was not looking her sweetest), and he claimed Glory for the next dance.
“So you knew my friend Drake before?” said Lord Robert.
“I knew him when he was a boy,” said Glory.
And then he began to sing his friend's praises—how he had taken a brilliant degree at Oxford, and was now private secretary to the Home Secretary, and would go into public life before long; how he could paint and act, and might have made a reputation as a musician; how he went into the best houses, and was a first-rate official; how, in short, he had the promised land before him, and was just on the eve of entering it.
“Then I suppose you know he is rich—enormously rich?” said Lord Robert.
“Is he?” said Glory, and something great and grand seemed to shimmer a long way off.
“Enormously,” said Sir Robert; “and yet a man of the most democratic opinions.”
“Really?” said Glory.
“Yes,” said Lord Robert; “and all the way down in the hansom he has been trying to show me how impossible it is for him to marry a lady.”
“Now why did you tell me that I wonder?” said Glory, and Lord Robert began to fidget with