Rising, she turned to take the children’s hands. The path was here, and they would walk it now together. The three walked out the path through light and shade, their faces set toward faërie. The watchers of the dance saw children with Ariel then, as clearly as if they were really there. And if they did not know exactly that they were on their way to faërie along with Ariel, they sensed something very like it. Ariel and her invisible dance-children came to a sunny clearing. There, in a circle of happiness, they began walking slowly round and round in faërie. Until they stopped—to wait and listen in faërie. Then, and then only Ariel bent her head to look into the faces of her dance children. But it was not Persis and Nicky’s faces that gave her back her look. Here were two dark, thinner faces. Greek in their perfection of feature. High-held, narrow heads, they had. And the dark, soft eyes of their dream-lighted faces were Hugh’s eyes over again.... _Hugh’s eyes, in children’s faces_! The dance went to shatters. Electric light tore away the sunlight from the clearing. And as though the music had been rays from the dance, it faded, thinned away.... A drawing-room remained, and a group of moved and almost unstrung people. Ariel, standing still, startled by her vision of the dark, aquiline little faces of those terribly beloved dream children, looked about almost wildly for Hugh. And she found him leaning against the jamb of one of the long windows. He was looking at her, waiting for her eyes. Ariel knew that the others were there somewhere, as well,—even that Michael was coming toward her from the piano. She knew where she was. She knew who she was. But in that instant, even with the dance shattered for her, she was too much at one with her soul to keep her secret longer. And Hugh’s face, for any one who could bear to look on such heart’s nakedness, told as much as hers. There flashed between them, across half the length of a room, terrible and startling as lightning, the mutual promise of love’s consummation. Then Ariel blushed. Red swept from the tip of her chin up over her face. She was no longer a fairy-tale girl. Her cheeks seemed rounder, her smile for Anne who had rushed upon her with shrieks of praise, was not light-tipped and eerie. It was warm, merry. Not until Michael Schwankovsky fell to kissing her forehead and her hands with rapturous joy over her performance did the blush fade. Chapter XXIX Every one was exclaiming the same thing. “Genius! Isadora was never so wonderful! Ariel Clare, why didn’t you do it for us before!” Every one except Hugh. He had got himself out of the room into the summer night, and, invisible himself, stood looking through the open window at Ariel, the center of the charmed, noisy little crowd.