the tables across the colour scraps which
two colours always dominated--horizon-blue and mourning black.

Then he saw a gloved hand raised in a signalling gesture, and recognized
the lady of whom he had made his inquiries for Mrs. Steele.

He had seen only the one face, for that particular group sat partly
screened behind the inevitable centre stand crowned with its masterpiece
of decoration, where a huge lobster lay in state on an ice-cake,
surrounded by a variegated cordon of _hors d'oeuvres_.

Then Boone made his way between the tables and found himself being
presented to several other women, to a pair of liaison officers on leave
and, because it all took place in a moment, suddenly felt the floor grow
unsteady under his feet, and saw, as the one clear vision in a blur of
indistinctness, the slender figure of a woman whose hair was a disputed
dominion along the borderland of gold and brown.

As Anne rose to meet him--for she did rise--the man looked into the face
for which he had so long been seeking, and found it paler and thinner
than he had known it, yet paradoxically older only in the sense of being
perfected and tempered.

The violet eyes held undimmed the light that he had worshipped, and if
one could see that sometimes they had looked on ghosts one could see too
that they had prevailed over their haunting.

Boone forgot the others about him.

"I have been searching for you," he said.

It was not until late that day that they found themselves alone, sitting
in the gardens of the Luxembourg on the south side of the Seine.
Convalescent veterans, some of them pitifully young, were taking the air
there as the day cooled toward evening, and Boone and Anne Masters sat
on a bench, contented for a while to let the silence rest upon them.

Much had been said and much remained to be said. Finally Boone declared
fervently; "At all events, I've found you!"

"Somehow," her voice was low and a little tremulous, "I always felt that
if--we ever found ourselves--we would find each other."

"And I think," he responded gravely, "we've done that."

"It wasn't an easy road," she told him, and then as suddenly as an April
sun may break dartingly through rainclouds she laughed, and in her
violet eyes flashed the old merriment and whimsical humour. "I can laugh
now, Boone, but I couldn't then.... Once I could have reached out my
hand and touched you."

His eyes widened, and his vanity suffered a sharp sting. He would hav