And now once more they
had escaped, again he felt the strange stir in his blood. The
slight flush on his cheek grew suddenly deeper. He looked past
the girl opposite to him, out of the restaurant, across the
street, into that little sitting-room in the Milan Court. It was
Elizabeth who was there in front of him. Again he heard her
voice, saw the turn of her head, the slow, delightful curve of
the lips, the eyes that looked into his and spoke to him the
first strange whispers of a new language. His heart gave a quick
throb. He was for the moment transformed, a prisoner no longer,
a different person, indeed, from the stolid, well-behaved young
man who found himself for the first time in his life in these
unaccustomed surroundings. Then Beatrice leaned towards him, her
voice brought him back to the present--not, alas, the voice which
at that moment he would have given so much to have heard.
"To-night," she murmured, "I feel as though we were at the
beginning of new things. We must drink a toast."
Tavernake filled her glass and his own.
"Luck to you in your new profession!" he said.
"And here is one after your own heart, you most curious of men!"
she exclaimed, a few seconds later. "To the undiscovered in
life!"
He drained his glass and set it down empty.
"The undiscovered," he muttered, looking around. "It is a very
good toast, Beatrice. There are many things of which one might
remain ignorant all one's life if one relied wholly upon one's
own perceptions.
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