But to two at least of the party—­and perhaps even to three—­that bare room was radiant beyond any they had ever known.

Orange and amber lightening into sunshine, purple into heliotrope, tender greens and lucent blues, burning crimson and fiery red, were the flames of the driftwood, and in these surely the imagination may find its happiest auguries.  For if the dancing flames, out of their chastened knowledge, sang only of the past, in the minds of their watchers they were singing of futures brighter and more glowing than anything the past had ever known.  And so, to two at least of them,—­and perhaps to three,—­never surely was there room so radiant as that bare room in that empty house on Brecqhou.

Miss Penny had the high endowment of a large heart, a wide imagination, and sentiment sufficient for a high-class girls’ boarding-school.

She found herself for the moment out of place, yet she could not remove herself without too obvious an intention.  She did the next best thing.  She settled herself on her chair in a corner, slipped off her shoes, sat on her feet, and went to sleep.

Margaret, indeed, glanced at her suspiciously once or twice, without moving her head by so much as a hair’s-breadth.  But she seemed really and truly asleep, and for a moment Margaret was amazed that anyone could think of sleep in that enchanted room.  But then she remembered that it was different—­Hennie was Hennie, and she was she, and it was for her that the crystal ball of life had opened of a sudden and shown the radiance within.

How long they sat in silence before the rainbow fire she never knew.

Hennie was snoring gently—­purring as one might say—­in the most genuinely ingenuous fashion.

Graeme, in the riot of happy possibilities evoked by the disclosure of Mr. Pixley’s perfidy, would have been content to sit there for ever, since Margaret was at his side.  It was enough to know that she was there.  He did not need to turn his head to enjoy the sight of her with gross material vision.  Every tight-strung fibre of his being told him of her nearness, in ways compared with which sight and sound and touch are gross and feeble travesties of communication.  Their spirits surely reached out and touched in that silent communion before the rainbow fire.

There were many things he wanted to ask her now.  But they could wait, they could wait.  The Doubting Castles he had built in his despair had had no foundations.  He was building anew already, and now with rosy hope and golden faith, and the topstones of his building mingled with the stars.

He woke of a sudden to a sense of lack of consideration for her in his own enjoyment.  Doubtless she was tired out, and was only kept from following Miss Penny’s example by his crass stupidity in sitting there in that stolid fashion.

“Pray forgive me!” he said, as he rose quietly.  “You must be tired, too.  I will take the other room and you can join Miss Penny.”