THE SACRED FOUNT
the candour of my surprise was all I tried to make it. "Is she with you there?"
"No, but she has asked me to say to you that if you'll presently be in the drawing-room she'll come."
Who could doubt, as I laid my hand on his shoulder, fairly patting it, in spite of myself, for applause—who could doubt where I would presently be? "It's most uncommonly good of both of you."
There was something in his inscrutable service that, making him almost august, gave my dissimulated eagerness the sound of a heartless compliment. I stood for the hollow chatter of the vulgar world, and he—oh, he was as serious as he was conscious; which was enough. "She says you'll know what she wishes—and she was sure I'd find you here. So I may tell her you'll come?"
His courtesy half broke my heart. "Why, my dear man, with all the pleasure———! So many thousand thanks. I'll be with her."
"Thanks to you. She'll be down. Good-night." He looked round the room at the two or three clusters of men, smoking, engaged, contented, on their easy seats and among their popped corks; he looked over an instant at Ford Obert, whose eyes, I thought, he momentarily held. It was absolutely as if, for me, he were seeking such things—out of what was closing over him—for the last time. Then he turned again to the door, which, just not to fail
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