Harry occupied a bedroom and a sitting-room in that Boulevard St. Germain of Brighton, Oriental Terrace, opposite the club. The sitting-room had a window, from where you could see the pier if your neck were long enough; the bedroom was dark and gloomy, and suggestive of the monastic habit. Neither apartment had any ornament to speak of--the pictures wounded the gentlest critic; the chairs were mid-Victorian and covered in leather. Yet when Maryska came, he would have sworn that this was a house of Arcady. One wild question he put to her: one loud word of remonstrance which brought the tears to her eyes. Then she was in his arms, her heart beating like a frightened bird's, all her nerves quivering when her lips sought his own. "Maryska, what have you done?" She snatched her hat from her tousled hair, and threw it on the shabby sofa. Squatting upon the corner of the table, her luggage in her hand, she tried to tell as well as laughter and tears would permit. "It was after breakfast--Gabrielle had gone down to the church to see the organist. I ran out with all my money in my purse, and went round to Holly Place. She would not tell me where you were until I frightened her--_Dieu de mon âme_, what a woman she was! But I stamped my foot, and I said the things he used to say, and then she wrote it down for me. At the bottom of the wide hill I saw the _voiturier_, and called him. When I said that it was to Brighton, he laughed--the _gamin_ that he was! But I was angry once more and I got into the carriage, and I would not get out again. That seemed to please him. He said that he would vote for women, and he took me to the _gare_. I did not know that you must go by the railway to Brighton, and he laughed when I asked him--but the _facteur_ was there, and he said I was on time. So I came right along--and _ecco_, I am here! Are you glad that is so, _bête sauvage_? Are you not pleased that I have come to you?" He had not an idea what to say to her. The world seemed to be turned upside down in an instant. There was no such town as Brighton in all the kingdom. How the sun shone into that gloomy room! What diamonds of light were everywhere! He had come suddenly to the palace of his dreams and the mistress of it was here. And yet his talk must be a commonplace. The whys and wherefores would not stand aside even in an hour pregnant of such wonders. "Do you mean to say you bolted, Maryska--just biffed off without a word to anyone? My hat! what will the Silvesters say? What shall we tell them when we go back?" She swung a little bonnet by the strings and shrugged her shoulders determinedly.