“I never knew you lived here. Why didn’t you say so, and we could have met? And are you staying with Mary?” she continued, turning to Ralph. “What a pity we didn’t meet before.”
Thus confronted at a distance of only a few feet by the real body of the woman about whom he had dreamt so many million dreams, Ralph stammered; he made a clutch at his self-control; the colour either came to his cheeks or left them, he knew not which; but he was determined to face her and track down in the cold light of day whatever vestige of truth there might be in his persistent imaginations. He did not succeed in saying anything. It was Mary who spoke for both of them. He was struck dumb by finding that Katharine was quite different, in some strange way, from his memory, so that he had to dismiss his old view in order to accept the new one. The wind was blowing her crimson scarf across her face; the wind had already loosened her hair, which looped across the corner of one of the large, dark eyes which, so he used to think, looked sad; now they looked bright with the brightness of the sea struck by an unclouded ray; everything about her seemed rapid, fragmentary, and full of a kind of racing speed. He realized suddenly that he had never seen her in the daylight before.
Meanwhile, it was decided that it was too late to go in search of ruins as they had intended; and the whole party began to walk towards the stables where the carriage had been put up.
“Do you know,” said Katharine, keeping slightly in advance of the rest with Ralph, “I thought I saw you this morning, standing at a window. But I decided that it couldn’t be you. And it must have been you all the same.”
“Yes, I thought I saw you—but it wasn’t you,” he replied.
