第67章

"Yes, I have proof," she answered, "indirect but damning enough.

This man has sometimes forwarded and collected for me letters from connections of mine in Germany. He handed me one to-night from a distant cousin. You know him by name General Geroldberg. The first two pages are personal. Read what he says towards the end," she added, passing it on to Julian.

Julian turned up the lamp and read the few lines to which she pointed:

By the bye, dear cousin, if you should receive a shock within the next few days by hearing that our three great men have agreed to an absurd peace, do not worry. Their signatures have been obtained for some document which we do not regard seriously, and it is their intention to repudiate them as soon as a certain much-looked for event takes place. When the peace comes, believe me, it will be a glorious one for us. What we have won by the sword we shall hold, and what has been wrested from us by cunning and treachery, we shall regain.

"That man," Catherine declared, "is one of the Kaiser's intimates.

He is one of the twelve iron men of Germany. Now I will tell you the name of the man with whom I, have spent the evening. It is Baron Hellman. Believe me, he knows, and he has told me the truth. He has had this letter by him for a fortnight, as he told me frankly that he thought it too compromising to hand over.

To-night he changed his mind."

Julian stood speechless for a moment, his fists clenched, his eyes ablaze.

Catherine threw herself into his easy-chair and loosened her coat.

"Oh, I am tired!" she moaned. "Give me some water, please, or some wine."

He found some hock in the sideboard, and after she had drunk it they sat for some few minutes in agitated silence. The street sounds outside had died away. Julian's was the topmost flat in the block, and their isolation was complete. He suddenly realised the position.

"Perhaps," he suggested, with an almost ludicrous return to the commonplace, "the first thing to be done is for me to dress."

She looked at him as though she had noticed his dishabille for the first time. For a moment their feet seemed to be on the earth again.

"I suppose I seem to you crazy to come to you at such an hour," she said. "One doesn't think of those things, somehow."

"You are quite right," he agreed. "They are unimportant."

Then suddenly the sense of the silence, of their solitude, of their strange, uncertain relations to one another, swept in upon them both. For a moment the sense of the great burden she was carrying fell from Catherine's shoulders. She was back in a simpler world. Julian was no longer a leader of the people, the brilliant sociologist, the apostle of her creed. He was the man who during the last few weeks had monopolised her thoughts to an amazing extent, the man for whose aid and protection she had hastened, the man to whom she was perfectly content to entrust the setting right of this ghastly blunder. Watching him, she suddenly felt that she was tired of it all, that she would like to creep away from the storm and rest somewhere. The quiet and his presence seemed to soothe her. Her tense expression relaxed, her eyes became softer. She smiled at him gratefully.

"Oh, I cannot tell you," she exclaimed, "how glad I am to be with you just now! Everything in the outside world seems so terrible.

Do you mind-it is so silly, but after all a woman cannot be as strong as a man, can she? - would you mind very much just holding my hand for a moment and staying here quite quietly. I have had a horrible evening, and when I came in, my head felt as though it would burst. You do not mind?"

Julian smiled as he leaned towards her. A kind of resentment of which he had been conscious, even though in some measure ashamed of it, resentment at her unswerving loyalty to the task she had set herself, melted away. He suddenly knew why he had kissed her, on that sunny morning on the marshes, an ecstatic and incomprehensible moment which had seemed sometimes, during these days of excitement, as though it had belonged to another life and another world. He took both her hands in his, and, stooping down, kissed her on the lips.

"Dear Catherine," he said, "I am so glad that you came to me. I think that during these last few days we have forgotten to be human, and it might help us - for after all, you know, we are engaged!"

"But that," she whispered, "was only for my sake."

"At first, perhaps," he admitted, "but now for mine,"

Her little sigh of content, as she stole nearer to him, was purely feminine. The moments ticked on in restful and wonderful silence.

Then, unwillingly, she drew away from his protecting arm.

"My dear," she said, "you look so nice as you are, and it is such happiness to be here, but there is a great task before us."

"You are right," he declared, straightening himself. "Wait for a few minutes, dear. We shall find them all at Westminster - the place will be open all night. Close your eyes and rest while I am away."

"I am rested," she answered softly, "but do not be long. The car is outside, and on the way I have more to tell you about Nicholas Fenn."