herself.

Joyselle's confession had been complete and circumstantial. He had not
attempted to hide from her one thing, and in the relief of his, as it
seemed, unavoidable avowal, he had hardly given her time to speak. "It
was, I think, the evening you came in the golden gown. You remember? It
was a vision; but an angelic vision, Most Beautiful; but one that turned
me first to stone, and then to fire. Vivien must have worn a golden
gown. And then the evening in Pont Street--the storm, when I put my arms
round you--they went round the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, it
is true, but also round my daughter. But--in that lightning flash of
time I found they were round the woman compared to my love of whom the
whole world does not matter! And I ran into the night and walked for
hours in the rain, and I think I was mad. Then I determined to go to
America. And I would have gone, God knows, but--you came, and your
unconsciousness broke me down. If you had suspected, I should have gone;
I was on my way to the Steamship Company when I met you. And then,
Hampstead--and this past week--and then you came to me here where I
work--and where I dream--ah, my beloved!"

He was very gentle in his unhoped-for happiness, and to her immense
relief he never once mentioned, or even appeared to remember, his son.

When he asked her, with the marvelling curiosity of a boy lover, when
and why she ever came to love him, she only shook her head. "I love
you," she answered, and he forgot, looking at her, to insist.

No word of the future had been said, not a plan had been made. Only, at
parting, to meet later in the evening at the Newlyns, he said to her, "I
will be the greatest violinist in the world, my woman."

And her heart beat high with honest pride in him.

Too happy to think, she went down the stairs, and half-way down found
herself face to face with Gerald Carron.

It was nearly dark, but she could just see that his white face was drawn
and hideous with anger.

"What are you doing here?" she cried, drawing back, but furious in her
turn.

"What are you doing here? You--you!"

"You have been spying on me," she returned with a good assumption of
courage that she was very far from feeling. "Well--I have been to talk
to Mr. Joyselle. Have you any objection to my doing so?"

"Objection? Yes, I have. You have fooled us all. Engaged to the boy,
and--I have always known that you didn't care for that child, and
wondered--Now I know.