He went from the salon to her rooms--the pretty rooms of the woman of wealth and good taste, where every article of toilet and furniture spoke charmingly of the mistress. Mrs. Evremond’s dinner dress lay out on the bed; her maid stood in the window looking out. With a word about madame’s being very late to-night, she left the room discreetly. Neither dressing table nor bureau nor secretary had any letter for him. There was no evidence of a hasty departure, no melodramatic chaos in the tranquil rooms that, with bright wood fires and shut-in invitingness, waited her return. She had gone out, as usual, but not as usual had she returned. These rooms, to whose voices he had been for months deaf and indifferent, spoke to him now so insistingly that he turned away from them, not able to bear their appeal. Back in the salon the clock marked the quarter after nine--at half-past he would go out to the prefecture of the police--and what then? Did this mean that he discarded the idea of a voluntary flight from him? No--she was, of course, safe. She had simply left him without a word or sign. He could do nothing--but suffer and wait. In her withdrawal, in his certainty of loss of her, she grew infinitely precious in his eyes and, above all the rest of the world, for the first in a long time she took her rightful place. If anything sinister had occurred he knew the whole face of life would be altered for him forever. If she had left him, he determined to move heaven and earth to win her back to him--and just here he turned sharply at the opening of the salon door. He sprang toward her--his white and drawn face wore a look of fear and suffering that at the sight of her altered to a welcome and relief, and with a tenderness such as had never greeted Emily Evremond in her life before, he cried her name: “_Emily!_” He stammered it and stopped. The face of his wife was so different to what he would have looked for it to be, her coming was so little what he had planned for, that he had no words at command. “I am late. I am awfully late--I did not realize it was half-past nine. Have you dined, Maurice?” She laid her muff and furs down. She had only one glove on--a gray _suède_ glove; she drew it slowly off, her other hand was bare. “_Dined!_” echoed her husband. “Why, I’ve been waiting for you here since six o’clock. I’ve been horribly anxious. Emily, where on earth have you been?” He might have said, “Where in heaven?” for her face was heavenly. He knew her for a pretty woman, a graceful woman, but the face of his wife, as she stood looking at him, quiet, unemotional, was of a divinity that made him marvel. He felt more infinitely far away from her than if she had not returned to him. “I am sorry,” she said. “I had some things to do, and I did not realize the time. You must be starved, Maurice.”