ct....

Then the whole sky of my life lit up again with a strange light of
excitement and hope. I had a note, glad and serenely friendly, to say
they were to spend all the summer at Burnmore.

I remember how I handled and scrutinized that letter, seeking for some
intimation that our former intimacy was still alive. We were to meet.
How should we meet? How would she look at me? What would she think of
me?

Sec. 9

Of course it was all different. Our first encounter in this new phase
had a quality of extreme disillusionment. The warm living creature, who
would whisper, who would kiss with wonderful lips, who would say strange
daring things, who had soft hair one might touch with a thrilling and
worshipful hand, who changed one at a word or a look into a God of
pride, became as if she had been no more than a dream. A self-possessed
young aristocrat in white and brown glanced at me from amidst a group of
brilliant people on the terrace, nodded as it seemed quite carelessly
in acknowledgment of my salutation, and resumed her confident
conversation with a tall stooping man, no less a person than Evesham,
the Prime Minister. He was lunching at Burnmore on his way across
country to the Rileys. I heard that dear laugh of hers, as ready and
easy as when she laughed with me. I had not heard it for nearly three
years--nor any sound that had its sweetness. "But Mr. Evesham," she was
saying, "nowadays we don't believe that sort of thing----"

"There are a lot of things still for you to believe," says Mr. Evesham
beaming. "A lot of things! One's capacity increases. It grows with
exercise. Justin will bear me out."

Beyond her stood an undersized, brown-clad middle-aged man with a big
head, a dark face and expressive brown eyes fixed now in unrestrained
admiration on Mary's laughing face. This then was Justin, the incredibly
rich and powerful, whose comprehensive operations could make and break a
thousand fortunes in a day. He answered Evesham carelessly, with his
gaze still on Mary, and in a voice too low for my straining ears. There
was some woman in the group also, but she has left nothing upon my mind
whatever except an effect of black and a very decorative green sunshade.
She greeted Justin's remark, I remember, with the little yelp of
laughter that characterized that set. I think too there was someone else
in the group; but I cannot clearly recall who....

Presently as I and Philip made unreal conversation together I sa