In that delirious moment both had the sense of divine completion that comes only with love returned. For him there was but the woman in his arms, the one woman created for him since the foundation of the world. It was Kismet. For this he had come to Virginia. For this fate had turned and twisted a thousand ways. Through the riot of his senses, like a silver blaze, ran the legend of the calendar: “Every man carries his fate [Pg 327]upon a riband about his neck.” For her, something seemed to pass from her soul with that kiss, some deep irrevocable thing, shy but fiercely strong, that had sprung to him at that lip-contact as steel to magnet. The foliage about them flared up in green light and the ground under her feet rose and fell like deep sea-waves. She lifted her face to him. It was deathly pale, but the light that burned on it was lit from the whitest altar-fires of Southern girlhood. “Six weeks ago,” she whispered, “you had never seen me!” He held her crushed to him. She could feel his heart thudding madly. “I’ve always known you,” he said. “I’ve seen you a thousand times. I saw you coming to meet me down a cherry-blossomed lane in Kyoto. I’ve seen your eyes peering from behind a veil in India. I’ve heard your voice calling to me, through the padding camels’ feet, from the desert mirages. You are the dream I have gone searching always! Ah, Shirley, Shirley, Shirley!” [Pg 328] CHAPTER XXXVII THE DOCTOR SPEAKS While the vibrant strings hummed and sang through the roses, and the couples drifted on tireless and content, or blissfully “sat out” dances on the stairway, Katharine Fargo held her stately court no less gaily for the stealthy doubt that was creeping over her spirit. She had been so certain of what would happen that evening that when her father (between cigars on the porch with Judge Chalmers and Doctor Southall) had searched her out under a flag-of-truce, she had sent him to the right-about, laughingly declining to depart before royalty. But number followed number, and the knight in purple and gold had not paused again before her. Now the scarlet cloak no longer flaunted among the dancers, and the white satin gown and sparkling coronal had disappeared. The end of the next “round-dance” found her subsiding into the flower-banked alcove suddenly distrait amid her escort’s sallies. It was at this moment that she saw, entering the corridor from the garden, the missing couple. It was not the faint flush on Shirley’s cheek—that [Pg 329]was not deep—nor was it his nearness to her, though they stood closely, as lovers might. But there was in both their faces a something that resurgent conventionality had not had time to cover—a trembling reflection of that “light that never was, on sea or land”—which was like a death-stab to what lay far deeper than Katharine’s heart, her pride. She drew swiftly back, dismayed at the sudden verification, and for an instant her whole body chilled.