When again the door opened, he looked,
trembling. His fearful hope ended only in a headache, but he talked,
as was expected of him, and the hostess smiled approval.
"These friends of yours," he said aside to her, before leaving, "are
nice people to know. But----"
And he broke off, meeting her eyes.
"I don't understand," said his hostess, with a perplexed look.
"Then I daren't try to make you."
A few days after, at the great house of the great Russian lady, he
ascended the stairs without a tremor, glanced round the room with
indifference. No one would be there whom he could not face calmly.
Brilliant women awed him a little at first, but it was not till
afterwards, in the broken night following such occasions as this,
that they had power over his imagination; then he saw them, drawn
upon darkness, their beauty without that halo of worldly grandeur
which would not allow him to forget the gulf between them. The
hostess herself shone by quality of intellect rather than by charm
of feature; she greeted him with subtlest flattery, a word or two of
simple friendliness in her own language, and was presenting him to
her husband, when, from the doorway, sounded a name which made
Otway's heart leap, and left him tongue-tied.
"Mrs. Borisoff and Miss Derwent."
He turned, but with eyes downcast: for a moment he durst not raise
them. He moved, insensibly, a few steps backward, shadowed himself
behind two men who were conversing together.
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