er the music, to the corner in which I should not have felt it as
misrepresenting the matter to say that I surprised them. They owed
nothing of the harmony that held them--unlike my other couple--to the
constraint of a common seat; a small glazed table, a receptacle for
minute objects of price, extended itself between them as if it had
offered itself as an occasion for their drawing toward it a pair of low
chairs; but their union had nevertheless such an air of accepted
duration as led it slightly to puzzle me. This would have been a reason
the more for not interrupting it even had I not peculiarly wished to
respect it. It was grist to my mill somehow that something or other had
happened as a consequence of which Obert had lost the impulse to repeat
to me his odd invitation to intervene. He gave me no notice as I passed;
the notice was all from his companion. It constituted, I felt, on her
part, precisely as much and precisely as little of an invitation as it
had constituted at the moment--so promptly following our arrival--of my
first seeing them linked; which is but another way of saying that
nothing in Mrs. Server appeared to acknowledge a lapse. It was nearly
midnight, but she was again under arms; everything conceivable--or
perhaps rather inconceivable--had passed between us before dinner, but
her face was exquisite again in its repudiation of any reference.

Any reference, I saw, would have been difficult to _me_, had I unluckily
been forced to approach her. What would have made the rare delicacy of
the problem was that blankness itself was the most direct reference of
all. I had, however, as I passed her by, a comprehension as inward as
that with which I had watched Mrs. Briss's retreat. "_What_ shall I see
when I next see you?" was what I had mutely asked of Mrs. Briss; but
"God grant I don't see _you_ again at all!" was the prayer sharply
determined in my heart as I left Mrs. Server behind me. I left her
behind me for ever, but the prayer has not been answered. I did see her
again; I see her now; I shall see her always; I shall continue to feel
at moments in my own facial muscles the deadly little ache of her heroic
grin. With this, however, I was not then to reckon, and my simple
philosophy of the moment could be but to get out of the room. The result
of that movement was that, two minutes later, at another doorway, but
opening this time into a great corridor, I found myself arrested by a
combination that shoul