He simply held his cigarette still poised in his fingers, half-way to his lips, with the minutest relaxing of the smile that still hovered about them, while a dull and ashen grayness crept into his face, second by waiting second.
It was not until his eyes met hers that he took three wavering and undecided steps toward her.
With a silent movement--more of warning than of fright, he afterward told himself--she pressed her gloved fingers to her lips.

What her intent eyes meant to say to him, in that wordless, telepathic message, Durkin could not guess; all thought was beyond him.

But in a moment or two the roadway cleared, the car shook and plunged forward, the floating curtains fluttered and trailed behind.
Durkin turned blindly, and pushed and ran and dodged through the languidly amazed promenaders, following after that sudden and bewildering vision, as after his last hope in life.

But the fine, white, limestone Riviera dust from the fading car's tire-heels, and the burnt gases from its engines, were all the road held for him, as it undulated off into hillside quietnesses.
He heard the young Chicagoan calling after him, breathless and anxious.
But he ran on until he came to a side street, shadowed with garden walls and villas and greenery.

Slipping into this, he immured himself in the midnight silences, to be alone with the contending forces that tore at him.
If his companion was right, and such things as this made up Romance, then, after all, the drama of life had lost none of its bewilderment.
For the woman he had seen between the floating purple curtains was his own wife..