"Here you are, Paul. Here's something worth looking at," said he as Wyndham joined him; and, soldier-like, they soon fell to discussing the event rather than the picture. Desmond--his head full of tactics and military history--held forth fluently quite in his old vein; while Paul--who heard scarce one word in six--nodded sagely at appropriate intervals. Hope died hard in him. A clock outside, chiming the half-hour, rang its knell with derisive strokes that seemed to beat upon his heart. It was just his luck. She would never turn up. A hundred contingencies might arise to prevent her--a street accident, a headache, bad news of her father---- Sudden silence from Theo cut short the dismal list; and one glance at him told Paul that his hour was come indeed. For Desmond stood rigid, a dull flush burning through his tan; and his eyes looked over Paul's shoulder towards the entrance into Room Number One. "My God!" he muttered hoarsely, "Here's Honor!" Without a word Paul turned on his heel and saw how she, too, stood spellbound, there by the doorway, her cheeks aflame, her eyes more eloquent than she knew. Taken completely unawares, each had surprised the other's secret, even as Paul had foreseen. In that lightning flash of mutual recognition, the end he had wrought for, and agonised for, was achieved. Obviously they had no further need of his services--and, unnoticed by either, he passed quietly out of the room. For one measureless minute they remained confronting each other; scarcely daring to breathe lest they break the spell of that passionate unspoken avowal. Then Honor came forward slowly, like one walking in her sleep--and the spell was gone. In two strides Desmond had reached her and grasped her outstretched hand. No attempt at conventional futilities marred their supreme moment. Words seemed an impertinence in view of the overwhelming fact that he stood before her thus--his face transfigured and illumined by love unutterable, by a discovery scarcely realised even now. There was so much to tell, and again, so little after all, that there seemed no need to tell it. Yet Honor could not choose but long for the sound of his voice; and to that end she tried very gently to withdraw her hand. Desmond--suddenly aware that they were alone--tightened his grasp. "No--no," he protested under his breath, "unless--you wish it. _Do_ you--Honor?" "I don't wish it," she answered very low, and her eyes, resting on his, had a subdued radiance as of sunlight seen through mist. Haloed in that radiance Desmond beheld the "infernal chap" he had been cursing for weeks; realised instantaneously all that the recognition implied; and, capturing both her hands, crushed them between his own. "Honor--my splendid Honor!" He still spoke under his breath; and still his eyes held hers in a gaze so compelling that it seemed as though he were drawing her very soul into his own with a force that she had neither will nor power to resist.