"The divinest thing about that little inn was its miniature dining-room, composed almost entirely of a large bow-window and a long Queen Anne refectory table. There were three tables, of which never more than one was occupied. Maurice and I had sat at the table by the window, and now my reaction and I sat there again; we looked out on to a toy garden sloping down to a brown stream which made much more noise than you could think possible for so narrow a thing. My back was to the door, and I sat facing a large mirror, with the garden and the stream on my right; he sat facing the window, adoring me, the adventure, the stream, and the food. And I was happy too, for now I realised that I had fallen out of love with Maurice, for his ghost didn't haunt the chair beside me, and I could think of him tenderly, without regret. I was happy--until, in the mirror in front of me, I saw the great figure of Maurice, and his face, at the open door. Our eyes met in the mirror, the eyes of statues, waiting.... I don't know what I felt--I wasn't afraid, I know. Perhaps I wasn't even ashamed. I don't know how long he stood there, filling the doorway. Not more than a few seconds, but all the intimacy of six weeks met in our glance in that mirror. At last he took his eyes off mine and looked at the man beside me, who hadn't seen him. I thought his lips twitched, and his eyes became adorably stern, and then the mirror clouded over.... When I could see again the door was closed, and Maurice was gone. The magic mirror was empty of all but my unbelieving eyes, and the profile of the man beside me, who hadn't seen him and never knew that I had lived six weeks while he ate a potato.... "I stayed my week out in Wales, because I always try to do what is expected of me. When I got home, right on the top of a pile of letters--I had given orders for nothing, not even wires, to be sent on to me--was a wire, which had arrived one hour after I had left for Wales. It was from Southampton, and it said: 'Just arrived. Am going straight up to the little palace in Wales because of memories. Will arrive there dinner-time. Shall we dine together by the window?' "And so, you see, I had won and lost and won again, but how pathetically.... Am I such a bad woman, d'you think?" _The London Venture_: VIII [Illustration] VIII