Once more the latter passed his hand over the back of his head. You know that gesture. It is so English! and always denotes a certain measure of perturbation. Then he said with seeming irrelevance: "I suppose I had better go now." His eyes sought Louisa's, trying to read what she thought and felt. Imagine the awful moment! For he loved her, as you know, with that intensity of passion of which a nature like his--almost cramped by perpetual self-containment--is alone capable. Then to have to stand before her wondering what the next second would reveal, hardly daring to exchange fear for certitude, because of what that certitude might be. He sought her eyes and had no difficulty in finding them. They had never wandered away from his face. To him--the ardent worshipper--those eyes of hers had never seemed so exquisitely luminous. He read her soul then and there as he would a book. A soul full of trust and brimming over with compassion and with love. Colonel Harris was loyal to the core; he clung to his loyalty, to his belief in Luke as he would to a rock, fearful lest he should flounder in a maze of wonderment, of surmises, of suspicions. God help him! But in Louisa even loyalty was submerged in a sea of love. She cared nothing about suspicions, about facts, about surmises. She had no room in her heart for staunchness: it was all submerged in love. There was no question, no wonderment, no puzzle in the eyes which met those of Luke. You see she was just a very ordinary kind of woman. All she knew was that she loved Luke: and all that she conveyed to him by that look, was just love. Only love. And love--omnipotent, strange, and capricious love--wrought a curious miracle then! For Colonel Harris was present in the room, mind you, a third--if not an altogether indifferent--party, there where at this moment these two should have been alone. It was Colonel Harris's presence in the room that transformed the next instant into a wonderful miracle: for Luke was down on his knees before his simple-souled Lou. She had yielded her hand to him and he had pressed an aching forehead against the delicately perfumed palm. In face of that love which she had given him, he could only worship: and would have been equally ready to worship before the whole world. And therein lay the miracle. Do you not agree, you who know Englishmen of that class and stamp? Can you conceive one of them falling on his knees save at the bidding of omnipotent Love, and by the miracle which makes a man forget the whole world, defy the whole world, give up the whole world, driven to defiance, to forgetfulness, to self-sacrifice, for the sake of the torturing, exquisite moments of transcendental happiness? CHAPTER XXIII WHY ALL THIS MYSTERY?