Anita’s back was towards me. Her voice, as she spoke over her shoulder, rang high, muffled, imperious, and—I laughed. In a flash the stranger’s eyes were on me, and I found myself thrilling where I sat, absurdly startled for the moment, because—she knew me too! She knew me quite well. She was smiling at me, not vaguely as who should say—‘Oh, surely I’ve seen you somewhere?’ but with intimate, disturbing knowledge. It was the glance that a doctor gives you, the swift, acquainted glance that, without offence, deciphers you. I was not offended either, only curious and—attracted. She looked so friendly. I half began to say—‘But when? but where?’ but her bearing overruled me. Her mouth was pursed conspiratorially: if her hand had been free she would have put a finger to her lip. I smiled back at her, flattered to be partner in her uncomprehended secret. But I was curious—oh, I was curious! It was incredible to me that Anita and the rest should stand, subduing their voices to the soft, thick stillness that she and the fog between them had brought into the room, and yet remain unconscious of her vivid presence. I was longing to see their faces when they should at last turn and see her, and yet, if you understand, I was afraid lest they should turn too soon and break the pleasant numbness that was upon me. And upon them—the spell was upon them too. It was the look in her eyes, not glamorous, but kind. It healed. It passed like a drowse across the squabblers at the table: it stilled Anita’s feverish monologue. Indeed the room had grown very still. There was no sound left in it but the slurring of the lamp. It rested upon Kent as he stood in dumb misery, and I watched the strained lines of his body slacken and grow easier beneath it. At that—at that ease she gave him—suddenly I loved her. And as if I had spoken, as if I had touched her with my hand, her eyes, that had grown heavy with his trouble, turned, brightening, upon me, as if I were the answer to a problem, the lifting of a care. But what the problem was I could not then tell; for, staring as she made me—as she made me—into her divining eyes, I saw in them not her thought but my own at last made clear to me—my dream, my hope, my will and my desire, newborn and naked, and, I swear it, bodiless to me before that night and that hour. It was too soon. I was not ready. It shamed me and I flinched, my glance wandering helplessly away like a dog’s when you have forced it to look at you. And so noticed, idly, uncomprehending at first, and then with a stiffening of my whole body, that her hand did not show as other hands, blood-red against the light she screened, but coldly luminous, like the fingers of a cloud through which the moon is shining: and that her breast was motionless, unstirred by any breath. Then I was afraid. I felt my skin rising. I felt my bones grow cold. I could not move. I could not breathe. I could not think.