I could hear Mrs. Franklin Shane mumbling the phrases of introduction, rendered unimportant by the radiant recognition that for the moment enveloped us, that burst around us as a flame in which our hostess seemed to shrivel and go out in a thin haze of silk and chiffon. I remember looking around for her presently, and wondering how she had got away from us. We began again at the point where we had left off. "So you did go on the stage then, in spite of Taylorville?" "And you," I pressed my foot into the velvet pile of the carpet to make sure that I stood. "You are an engineer, I suppose?" "In spite of my uncle!" Somewhere in the next room some one began to sing. I did not hear the song nor see the Titian. I was back in Willesden pasture and the soft rain of dying leaves was on my face. I was conscious of nothing but his hand which he had laid upon my arm to steady me against the pressure of the crowd which swayed and turned upon itself to let Mrs. Shane through, to drag me to be presented to the singer who was even more of a notability than I was. There was an interval then in which I appeared to be going through the forms of society, and going through them under an intolerable sense of injustice in the fact that having found Helmeth Garrett at last, now I had lost him. It was one of those occasions when the inward monitor is so bent on its own affairs that the habit of living goes on automatically, or does not go on at all. It went on so with me for half an hour. By degrees, what seemed an immense unbearable throbbing of the universe, resolved itself at the renewal of that electrifying touch on my arm, to the thrum of an orchestra in the refreshment room. I felt myself carried along by the pressure of the crowd in that direction, but just at the turn of the stair that went down to it I was drawn peremptorily aside. "Come," Mr. Garrett insisted, "come out of this. I want to talk to you." There was the old imperiousness in his manner, exclusive of all other considerations. He seemed to know the house. We took a turn through the hall came out presently at the _porte cochère_ where a line of carriages waited, supported by a line of skirt-coated figures like little wooden Noahs before an ark. I let him put me into a closed carriage without a word of protest. I had not taken leave of my hostess; I had not so much as thought of her. I suppose he had been arranging this in the interval in which I had not seen him. The moment the door of the carriage was shut, we clasped hands and laughed shamelessly. "You had three little freckles high up on your cheek, what became of them?" he demanded. All at once his mood changed again. "All the years I've been without you!... I saw a picture of you in a magazine three years ago in Alaska. I came near writing." "You should have. What were you doing there?"