And then Miranda said, "Shall we stop?"
"Oh, I didn't, did I?" exclaimed the horror-stricken Charnock, as he looked downwards at her toes.
"No, you didn't," Miranda assured him with a laugh. "Do you usually?"
"No," he declared vehemently, "believe me, no! Never, upon my word! I have danced with Spanish women,--not at all,--no--no--no--no."
"Quite so," said Miranda.
And they laughed suddenly each to the other, and in a moment they were friends. Conversation came easily to their tongues, and underneath the surface of their light talk, the deeps of character called steadily like to like.
"I have seen you once before, Mrs. Warriner," said Charnock, as they seated themselves in an alcove of the room.
"Yes," she returned promptly, "at Monte Carlo, six years ago," and her face lost its look of enjoyment and darkened with some shadow from her memories. The change was, however, unremarked by Charnock.
"It seems strange," he said in an absent voice, "that we should meet first of all in a gambling-room, and the next time at a ball."
"Why?"
The question could not be answered. Charnock had a real but inexplicable feeling that Miranda and he should have met somewhere amidst the grandeur of open spaces, in the centre of the Sahara, and for the moment he forgot to calculate the effect of the sand upon Miranda's eyes. This feeling, however, he could hardly express at the present point of their acquaintanceship; and, indeed, he immediately ceased to be aware of it.
"Do you actually remember our meeting in that way six years ago?" he exclaimed. "How wonderful of you!"
"Why?" again asked Mrs. Warriner. "Why is it wonderful, since you remember it?"
"Ah, but I didn't remember it until"--he paused for a second or two--"until I saw your face in a looking-glass."
Miranda glanced at him in considerable perplexity. Then she said with a demure smile, "I have at times seen it there myself."
"No doubt," he replied with a glance at the cunning arrangement of her hair.
"My maid does that," said she, biting her lip.
"No doubt, but you sit in front of the glass at the time. You're in the room," he continued hastily; "but when I saw your face in my mirror, you couldn't be. I was in bed,--I mean,--let me tell you!" He stopped, overwhelmed with embarrassment. Miranda, with an air of complete unconsciousness, carefully buttoned her glove; only the glove was already buttoned, and her mouth twitched slightly at the corners.
"It was just a week ago to-day," Charnock began again. "I got home to my hotel late."
"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Warriner, as though the whole mystery was now explained to her.
"I assure you," he retorted with emphasis, "that I dined in the train and drank nothing more serious than railway claret."
"I made no accusation whatever," Miranda blandly remarked, and seemed very well pleased.
"After I had fallen asleep, I began to dream, but not about you, Mrs.
Warriner; that's the strange feature of the business. It wasn't that I had been thinking of you that evening, or indeed, that I had ever been at all in the habit of thinking--" Again Charnock was utterly confused. "I don't seem to be telling the story with the best taste in the world, do I?" he said ruefully.
"Never mind," she said in a soothing voice.
"Of course, I could have turned it into a compliment," he continued.
"Only I take it you have no taste for compliments, and I lack the experience to put them tactfully."
"For a novice," said she, "you seem to be doing very well." Charnock resumed his story. "I dreamt solely of people I had seen, and incidents I had witnessed during the last week, at Tangier and at Plymouth. I dreamed particularly of a man I quarrelled with at Plymouth, and I suddenly woke up and saw your face in the mirror."
"As you fancied."
"It was no fancy. It was no dream-face that I saw--dream-faces are always elusive. It was no dream-face, it was yours."
"Or one like mine."
"There cannot be two."
"For a novice," repeated Miranda, with a smile, "you _are_ doing very well."
Charnock had watched her carefully while he told his story, on the chance that her looks, if not her lips, might give him some clue to the comprehension of his mysterious vision. But she had expressed merely an unconcerned curiosity and some amusement.
"Shall I explain your vision?" said she. "You must have seen me in London during the day: the recollection that you had seen me must have lain latent, so that when you woke up you saw me in your mirror and did not remember that you had seen me during the day."
"Were you at any theatre this day week?"
"No," said Miranda, after counting over the days.
"You did not see _Macbeth_ that night?"
"No."
"Then it is impossible I should have seen you. For I came up from Plymouth only that afternoon. I drove from Paddington to my hotel; from the hotel I went to the theatre; from the theatre I walked back to the hotel. It is impossible."
"It is very strange," said Miranda, whose interest was increasing, and whose sense of amusement had vanished; for she saw that her companion was moved by something more than curiosity. It was evident to her from his urgent tones, from the eagerness of his face, that he had some hidden reason for his desire to fathom the mystery. It seemed to her that he nourished some intention, some purpose in the back of his mind, which depended for fulfilment upon whether or no there was any feasible solution.
"Tell me your dream," she said.
"It was the oddest jumble,--it had neither sense nor continuity. Moors figured in it, ships, Lady Macbeth, the Major with his card-case, and the stranger who swore at me through the cab-window at Plymouth. The phrases that man used came into it."
"What phrases?"
"I couldn't repeat to you the most eloquent. There were milder ones, however. He called me a fair red-hotter amongst other things," said Charnock, laughing at his recollections, "and expressed a wish that I might--well, sit in that cab until I ante'd up in kingdom come."
Miranda leaned back in her seat and opened and shut her fan. "He was a stranger to you, you say?"
"Quite."
"You are sure?"
"Quite."
"You had never seen him anywhere--anywhere? Think!"
Charnock deliberated for a few seconds. "Never anywhere," he replied.