She had thrown off the white head-dress she had worn during the last act, and her delicately-tinted head and neck rose from the splendid wedding-gown of gold-embroidered satin--vision of flowerlike and aerial beauty.
Fast as the talk flowed about her, Kendal noticed that every one seemed to be, first of all, conscious of her neighbourhood, of her dress rustling past, of her voice in all its different shades of gaiety or quick emotion.
'Oh, Mr.Kendal,' she said, turning to him again after their first greeting--was it the magnetism of his gaze which had recalled hers?
--'if you only knew what your sister has been to me! How much I owe to her and to you! It was kind of you to come to-night.

I should have been so disappointed if you hadn't!' Then she came closer to him, and said archly, almost in his ear, 'Have you forgiven me ?' 'Forgiven you?
For what ?' 'For laying hands on Elvira, after all.

You must have thought me a rash and headstrong person when you heard of it.

Oh, I worked so hard at her, and all with the dread of you in my mind!' This perfect friendly openness, this bright _camaraderie_ of hers, were so hard to meet! 'You have played Elvira,' he said, 'as I never thought it would be played by anybody; and I was blind from first to last.

I hoped you had forgotten that piece of pedantry on my part.' 'One does not forget the turning-points of one's life,' she answered with a sudden gravity.
Kendal had been keeping an iron grip upon himself during the past hours, but, as she said this, standing close beside him, it seemed to him impossible that his self-restraint should hold much longer.