第48章 CHAPTER XXV(1)

He peered forward over his desk at the tall graceful figure whose entrance had been so noiseless, and whose footsteps had been so light that she stood almost within a few feet of him before he was even aware of her presence. Then his surprise was so great that he could only gasp out her name.

"You! Lucille!"

She smiled upon him delightfully.

"Me! Lucille! Don't blame your servant. I assured him that I was expected, so he allowed me to enter unannounced. His astonishment was a delightful testimony to your reputation, by the bye. He was evidently not used to these invasions."

Brott had recovered himself by this time, and if any emotion still remained he was master of it.

"You must forgive my surprise!" he said. "You have of course something important to say to me. Will you not loosen your cloak?"

She unfastened the clasp and seated herself in his most comfortable chair. The firelight flashed and glittered on the silver ornaments of her dress; her neck and arms, with their burden of jewels, gleamed like porcelain in the semi-darkness outside the halo of his student lamp. And he saw that her dark hair hung low behind in graceful folds as he had once admired it. He stood a little apart, and she noted his traveling clothes and the various signs of a journey about the room.

"You may be glad to see me," she remarked, looking at him with a smile. "You don't look it."

"I am anxious to hear your news," he answered. "I am convinced that you have something important to say to me."

"Supposing," she answered, still looking at him steadily, "supposing I were to say that I had no object in coming here at all - that it was merely a whim? What should you say then?"

"I should take the liberty," he answered quietly, "of doubting the evidence of my senses."

There was a moment's silence. She felt his aloofness. It awoke in her some of the enthusiasm with which this mission itself had failed to inspire her. This man was measuring his strength against hers.

"It was not altogether a whim," she said, her eyes falling from his, "and yet - now I am here - it does not seem easy to say what was in my mind."

He glanced towards the clock.

"I fear," he said, "that it may sound ungallant, but in case this somewhat mysterious mission of yours is of any importance I had better perhaps tell you that in twenty minutes I must leave to catch the Scotch mail."

She rose at once to her feet, and swept her cloak haughtily around her.

"I have made a mistake," she said. "Be so good as to pardon my intrusion. I shall not trouble you again."

She was half-way across the room. She was at the door, her hand was upon the handle. He was white to the lips, his whole frame was shaking with the effort of intense repression. He kept silence, till only a flutter of her cloak was to be seen in the doorway.

And then the cry which he had tried so hard to stifle broke from his lips.

"Lucille! Lucille!"

She hesitated, and came back - looking at him, so he thought, with trembling lips and eyes soft with unshed tears.

"I was a brute," he murmured. "I ought to be grateful for this chance of seeing you once more, of saying good-bye to you."

"Good-bye!" she repeated.

"Yes," he said gravely. "It must be good-bye. I have a great work before me, and it will cut me off completely from all association with your world and your friends. Something wider and deeper than an ocean will divide us. Something so wide that our hands will never reach across."

"You can talk about it very calmly," she said, without looking at him.

"I have been disciplining myself," he answered.

She rested her face upon her hand, and looked into the fire.

"I suppose," she said, "this means that you have refused Mr.

Letheringham's offer."

"I have refused it," he answered.

"I am sorry," she said simply.

She rose from her chair with a sudden start, began to draw on her cloak, and then let it fall altogether from her shoulders.

"Why do you do this?" she asked earnestly. "Is it that you are so ambitious? You used not to be so - in the old days.

He laughed bitterly.

"You too, then," he said, "can remember. Ambitious! Well, why not?

To be Premier of England, to stand for the people, to carry through to its logical consummation a bloodless revolution, surely this is worth while. Is there anything in the world better worth having than power?"

"Yes," she answered, looking him full in the eyes.

"What is it then? Let me know before it is too late."

"Love!"

He threw his arms about her. For a moment she was powerless in his grasp.