She read her blissful truancy in his eyes, his recognition of their having fallen apart, but not of its cause, which he thought was perhaps the monotony of their continuous agreement, and was now swiftly seeking a fresh bridge that in an instant, since clearly he intended to prolong the sitting, he would, deferentially flickering his eyelids, take courage to fling. But into the little pause came the sound of footsteps approaching through the hall, and an intensity of listening that was their common confession of well-being and was filling them with a wealth of eager communication that must now be postponed until to-morrow. But to-morrow the college friend would be in possession; there was only this evening, a solitary incident. Perhaps the door would open upon someone who would straightway withdraw, leaving the way open for the waiting conversation. And the college friend had come only for a few days ... But this falling from grace was rebuked by the reminder of Vereker’s all-round niceness. He would, of course, retain the intruder. If it were a man there would be three-cornered talk enlivened by what was being sacrificed to it. But with the opening of the door, as she raised her eyes towards it and caught in passing a glimpse of him upon his music stool, out of action and alone, she saw that dear and nice as he was, had always been, he could not fully engage her, was real to her on a level just short of reaching down to the forces of her nature; was pathetically, or culpably, a stranded man; subsisting. Guerini: huge, filling the doorway, hesitating for a moment and retreating, quietly closing the door, but not before Vereker wheeling round on his music-stool, had seen his departing form. It was his unexpectedness, the having forgotten him so that he came like an apparition, that had sent him away. Even so, a woman of the world would have promptly become a smiling blank and suitably vocal; or withdrawn and expressionless in the manner of a hotel guest only partly in possession of a room now to be partly taken over by another. But she had left her thoughts standing in her face, leaving Vereker, who had turned just too late, to be hostess.