Burton sat for some time without reply. For a
moment the strong wave of humanity which swept up
from his heart and set his pulses leaping, set the
music beating in the air, terrified him. Surely
this could mean but one thing! He waited almost
in agony for the thoughts which might fill his brain.
“Miss Cowper,” Mr. Bomford continued,
“has been much upset since your hasty departure
from Leagate. She is conscious of some mistake—some
foolish speech.”
Burton drew a little sigh of relief. After all,
what he had feared was not coming. He saw the
flaw, he felt even now the revulsion of feeling with
which her words had inspired him. Yet the other
things remained. She was still wonderful.
It was still she who was the presiding genius of that
sentimental garden.
“You are very kind,” he murmured.
“We shall expect you,” Mr. Bomford declared,
“at a quarter past eight this evening.”
Condemned!
To Burton, who was in those days an epicure in sensations,
there was something almost ecstatic in the pleasure
of that evening. They dined at a little round
table in the most desirable corner of the room—the
professor and Edith, Mr. Bomford and himself.
The music of one of the most famous orchestras in
Europe alternately swelled and died away, always with
the background of that steady hum of cheerful conversation.
It was his first experience of a restaurant de luxe.
He looked about him in amazed wonder. He had
expected to find himself in a palace of gilt, to find
the prevailing note of the place an unrestrained and
inartistic gorgeousness. He found instead that
the decorations everywhere were of spotless white,
the whole effect one of cultivated and restful harmony.
The glass and linen on the table were perfect.
There was nowhere the slightest evidence of any ostentation.
Within a few feet of him, separated only by that little
space of tablecloth and a great bowl of pink roses,
sat Edith, dressed as he had never seen her before,
a most becoming flush upon her cheeks, a new and softer
brilliancy in her eyes, which seemed always to be seeking
his. They drank champagne, to the taste and effects
of which he was as yet unaccustomed. Burton felt
its inspiring effect even though he himself drank
little.
The conversation was always interesting. The
professor talked of Assyria, and there was no man
who had had stranger experiences. He talked with
the eloquence and fervor of a man who speaks of things
which have become a passion with him; so vividly,
indeed, that more than once he seemed to carry his
listeners with him, back through the ages, back into
actual touch with the life of thousands of years ago,
which he described with such full and picturesque
detail. Not at any time during the dinner was
the slightest allusion made to that last heated interview
which had taken place between the three men. Even
when they sat out in the palm court afterwards, and
smoked and listened to the band and watched the people,
Mr. Bomford only distantly alluded to it.
