Part 64 (2/2)

He had seen only the one face, for that particular group sat partly screened behind the inevitable centre stand crowned with its masterpiece of decoration, where a huge lobster lay in state on an ice-cake, surrounded by a variegated cordon of _hors d'oeuvres_.

Then Boone made his way between the tables and found himself being presented to several other women, to a pair of liaison officers on leave and, because it all took place in a moment, suddenly felt the floor grow unsteady under his feet, and saw, as the one clear vision in a blur of indistinctness, the slender figure of a woman whose hair was a disputed dominion along the borderland of gold and brown.

As Anne rose to meet him--for she did rise--the man looked into the face for which he had so long been seeking, and found it paler and thinner than he had known it, yet paradoxically older only in the sense of being perfected and tempered.

The violet eyes held undimmed the light that he had wors.h.i.+pped, and if one could see that sometimes they had looked on ghosts one could see too that they had prevailed over their haunting.

Boone forgot the others about him.

”I have been searching for you,” he said.

It was not until late that day that they found themselves alone, sitting in the gardens of the Luxembourg on the south side of the Seine.

Convalescent veterans, some of them pitifully young, were taking the air there as the day cooled toward evening, and Boone and Anne Masters sat on a bench, contented for a while to let the silence rest upon them.

Much had been said and much remained to be said. Finally Boone declared fervently; ”At all events, I've found you!”

”Somehow,” her voice was low and a little tremulous, ”I always felt that if--we ever found ourselves--we would find each other.”

”And I think,” he responded gravely, ”we've done that.”

”It wasn't an easy road,” she told him, and then as suddenly as an April sun may break dartingly through rainclouds she laughed, and in her violet eyes flashed the old merriment and whimsical humour. ”I can laugh now, Boone, but I couldn't then.... Once I could have reached out my hand and touched you.”

His eyes widened, and his vanity suffered a sharp sting. He would have sworn that his heart-hunger would have declared her nearness at any hour of that long period of search, and he told her so, but she laughed again.

”That's in romance, Boone dear. We were in life.”

”When was it?”

”It was on Fifth Avenue--just off of Was.h.i.+ngton Square, one night when sleet was falling. I remember the wet pavements, because I had a hole in one shoe. I was wrestling with an umbrella that the wind tried to turn inside out--and we all but collided...”

”And you didn't speak to me!”

”No. I hurried away as fast as my feet could carry me--including the one with the leaky shoe.”

”But, Anne!” The reproach in his voice was almost an outcry, and the girl laid a hand gently, for a moment, over his.

”If I'd let you find me, Boone--just then--I'd never have found myself.

It would have been surrender.”

”But why!”

”Because--just then, I wasn't far from being hungry, and I was very--very close to despair.”

The man shuddered, and after a long silence he asked:

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