His farewell bow from the door to Lady Somerham was distinguished with a new affability.

"If we may be alone," he said softly, "I should like to come here."

Nevertheless, his visit left him a little disturbed, perhaps a little irritable. With all the dominant selfishness which is part of a man's love, he had spent every waking leisure moment since their last meeting in a world peopled by Jane and himself alone, a world in which any other would have been an intruder. His eagerly antic.i.p.ated visit to her had brought him sharply up against the commonplace facts of their day-by-day existence. He began to realise that she was without the liberty accorded to his s.e.x, or to such women as Nora Miall, whose emanc.i.p.ation was complete. Jane's way through life was guarded by a hundred irritating conventions. He began to doubt even whether she realised the full import of what had happened between them. There was nothing gross about his love, not even a speculation in his mind as to its ultimate conclusion. He was immersed in a wave of sentimentality. He wanted her by his side, free from any restraint. He wanted the joy of her presence, more of those soft, almost reluctant kisses, the mute obedience of her nature to the sweet and natural impulse of her love.

Of the inevitable end of these things he never thought. He was like a schoolboy in love for the first time. His desires led him no further than the mystic joy of her presence, the sweet, pa.s.sionless content of propinquity. For the time the rest lay somewhere in a world of golden promise. The sole right that he burned to claim was the right to have her continually by his side in the moments when he was freed from his work, and even with the prospect of the following night before him, he chafed a little as he reflected that until then he must stand aside and let others claim her. In a fit of restlessness he abandoned his usual table in the House of Commons grillroom, and dined instead at the Sheridan Club, where he drank a great deal of champagne and absorbed with ready appreciation and amus.e.m.e.nt the philosophy of the man of pleasure. This was one of the impulses which kept his nature pliant even in the midst of these days of crisis.

CHAPTER XII

Whilst Tallente was trying to make up for the years of pleasant good-fellowship which his overstudious life had cost him and to recover touch with the friends of his earlier days, Stephen Dartrey, filled with a queer sense of impending disaster, was climbing the steps to Nora's flat. On the last landing he lingered for a moment and clenched his fingers.

"I am a coward," he reflected sadly. "I have asked for this and it has come."

He stood for a moment perfectly still, with half-closed eyes, seeking for self-control very much in the fashion of a man who says a prayer to himself. Then he climbed the last few stairs, rang the bell and held out both his hands to Nora, who answered it herself.

"Commend my punctuality," he began.

"Why call attention to the one and only masculine virtue?" she replied.

"Let me take your coat."

He straightened his tie in front of the looking-gla.s.s and turned to look at her with something like wonder in his eyes.

"Dear hostess," he exclaimed, "what has come to you?"

"An epoch of vanity," she declared, turning slowly around that he might appreciate better the clinging folds of her new black gown. "Don't dare to say that you don't like it, for heaven only knows what it cost me!"

"It isn't only your gown--it's your hair."

"Coiffured," she confided, "by an artist. Not an ordinary hairdresser at all. He only works for a few of our aristocracy and one or two leading ladies on the stage. I pulled it half down and built it up again, but it's an improvement, isn't it?"

"It suits you," he admitted. "But--but your colour!"

"Natural--absolutely natural," she insisted. "You can wet your finger and try if you like. It's excitement. If you look into the depths of my wonderful eyes--I have got wonderful eyes, haven't I?"

"Marvellous."

"You will see that I am suffering from suppressed excitement. To-night is quite an epoch. To tell you the truth, I am rather nervous about it."

"Is he here?"

"You shall see him presently," she promised. "Come along."

"Where is Susan?" he asked, as he followed her.

"Gone out. So has my maid. I had a fancy to turn every one else out of the flat. Your only hot course will be from a chafing-dish. You see, I am anxious to impress--him--with my culinary skill. I hope you will like your dinner, but it will be rather a picnic."

Dartrey glanced back at the hall stand. There was no hat or coat there except his own. He followed Nora into the little study, which was separated only by a curtain from the dining room.

"I think your idea is excellent," he p.r.o.nounced. "And you will forgive me," he added, producing the parcel which he had been carrying under his arm. "See what I have brought to drink your health and his, even if he does not know yet the good fortune in store for him."

He set down a bottle of champagne upon the table. She laughed softly.

"You dear man!" she exclaimed. "Fancy your thinking of it! I thought you scarcely ever touched wine?"

"I am not a crank," he replied. "Sometimes my guests have told me that I have quite a reasonably good cellar for a man who takes so little himself. To-night I am going to drink a gla.s.s of champagne."

"Pommery!" she exclaimed. "I hope you'll be able to open it."

"That shall be my task," he promised. "You needn't worry about flippers. I have some in my pocket. And by the by," he added, glancing at the clock, "where is your other guest? It is ten minutes past eight, and I can hear your chafing-dish sizzling."

She threw back the curtain and took his arm. The table was laid for two. He looked at it in bewilderment and then back at her.

"He has disappointed you?"

She smiled up at him.

"He has disappointed me many, many times," she said, "but not to-night."

"I don't--understand," he faltered.

"I think you do," she answered.

He took the chair opposite to hers. The chafing-dish was between them.

He was filled with a curious sense of unreality. It was a little scene, this, out of a story or a play. It didn't actually concern him. It wasn't Nora who sat within a few feet of him, bending down over the chafing-dish and stirring its contents vigorously.

"Of course," she said, "I am perfectly well aware that this is an anti-climax. I am perfectly well aware, too, that you will have a most uncomfortable dinner. You won't know what to say to me and you'll be dying all the time to look in your calendar and see if this is leap year. But even we working women sometimes," she went on, smiling bravely up at him, "have whims. I had a whim, Stephen, to let you know that I am very stupidly fond of you, and although it isn't your fault and I expect nothing from you except that you do not alter our friendship, you just stand in the way whenever I think of marrying any one."

Perhaps because speech seemed so inadequate, Dartrey said nothing. He sat looking at her with a queer emotion in his soft, studious eyes, drumming a little on the table with his finger tips, not quite sure what it meant that his heart was beating like a young man's and a queer sensation of happiness was stealing through his whole being.

"Nothing in the world," he murmured, "could alter our friendship."

"What you see before you," she went on, "is an oyster stew. The true hostess, you see, studying her guest's special tastes. It is very nearly cooked and if you do not p.r.o.nounce it the most delicious thing you ever ate in your life, I shall be terribly disappointed."

Dartrey sat as still as a man upon whom some narcotic influence rested, and his words sounded almost unnatural.

"I am convinced," he a.s.sured her, "that I shall be able to gratify you."

"What you get afterwards you see upon the sideboard: cold partridges--both young birds though--ham, salad of my own mixing, and, behold! my one outburst of extravagance--strawberries. There is also a camembert cheese lying in ambush outside because of its strength. I would suggest that during the three minutes which will ensue before I serve you with the stew, you open the champagne. You are so dumbfounded at my audacity that perhaps a little exercise will be good for you."

Dartrey rose to his feet, produced the corkscrew and found the cork amenable. He filled Nora's gla.s.s and his own. Then he leaned over her and took her hand for a moment. His face was full of kindness and he was curiously disturbed.

"You are the dearest child on earth, Nora," he said. "I find myself wishing from the bottom of my heart that it were possible that you could be--something nearer and dearer to me."

She looked feverishly into his face and pushed him away.

"Go and sit down and don't be absurd," she enjoined. "Try and forget everything else except that you are going to eat an oyster stew. That is really the way to take life, isn't it--in cycles--and it doesn't matter then whether one's happy times are bounded by the coming night or the coming years. For five minutes, then, a paradise--of oyster stew."

"It is distinctly the best oyster stew I have ever tasted in my life,"