It was late before I recognised where all this was leading me; but when at last I awakened, it drove me with ten-fold force. I wanted no dim future through which I might rove as a shadow among shadows; they had served their turn in the scheme of things and brought me face to face with reality. If Paradise lay before me, Eve must be there, else it would be a mockery: if I had to face failure, I needed a comforter. I wanted Elsa. I mistrust all novelists’ descriptions of the psychology of a man in love. To me, that passion seems an integration of selfishness and selflessness each developed to its highest pitch and so intimately mingled that one cannot tell where the dividing line between them lies. Luckily, analysis of this kind is beyond the scope of my narrative. The affairs of Elsa Huntingtower and me, so far as they concerned ourselves alone, have no place upon my canvas; but since in their reactions they impinged upon a greater engine, I cannot pass them over in silence without omitting a factor which must have had its influence upon events. * * * * * I suppose, from what I see around me, that the average man falls in love by degrees. He seems to be subjected to two forces which alternately act upon him in opposite directions, so that his advance to his goal is intermittent and sometimes slow. In my case, there was nothing of this wavering. Somehow, as soon as I realised what my feelings were, I could not delay an hour longer than was necessary. The real fact was, I suspect, that I did not suddenly fall in love, though I seemed, even to myself, to have done so. In all probability I had been falling in love for weeks without knowing it; and when the illumination came, the long sub-conscious travail had prepared me for instant action. As it happened, it was one of the days on which we usually motored into the country. At two o’clock I was in the Square with the car; and almost at once the door opened and Elsa appeared. My dreams had far outrun reality; and as the slim fur-clad figure came down the steps I felt my pulse leap. It lasted only for a moment, but I think she read my face like an open book. Behind her came Nordenholt, looking very tired. I could not help seeing the change which the last months had made in him. The deep lines on his face were deeper still; his eyes seemed to be different in some way, though as piercing as ever; and his step had lost the lightness it had when I saw him first in London. He looked me over, as he usually did, but said nothing as he stepped into the back of the car. Elsa took her customary place beside me; and it gave me a novel thrill as I arranged the rug about her. It seemed as though something had fallen from my eyes so that I saw her in a new and wonderful aspect.