Back again to his rooms, and, later on, once more to Louise's little
house in Kensington; a few minutes' masterful pleading, and then
success. Louise wrapped herself up and descended to the street by his
side.
For an hour or more John drove steadily westward, scarcely speaking more
than a chance word. It was twilight when he brought the car to a
standstill. Louise raised her veil and looked up.
"Well?" she asked inquiringly.
He pushed back the throttle on his steering-wheel and stopped the
engine. Then he turned toward her.
"I have something to say to you," he said. "I have brought you here that
I may say it in my own way and in my own atmosphere."
She responded instantly to his mood, although she did not yet grasp the
full significance of the situation. She leaned forward in the car, and
her eyes were lighted with interest. Into their faces a slight,
drizzling rain was carried at intervals by a gusty, north wind. The sky
was murky gray, except for one black mass of cloud that seemed bending
almost over their heads.
Down at their feet--they had made a circuit and were facing London
again--began the long lines of feeble lights which lit the great avenues
stretching onward to the city, the lights of suburban thoroughfares, of
local railways, and here and there a more brilliant illumination of some
picture palace or place of amusement. Farther away still, the vast glow
from the heart of the city was beginning to flare against the murky
sky--here red and threatening, as if from some great conflagration; in
other places yellow, with a sicklier light of fog-strangled brilliance.
"This is like you!" Louise murmured. "You had to bring me out to a
hilltop, on the dreariest hour of a wet March afternoon, to tell
me--what?"
"First of all," John began, "I will answer a question which you have
asked me three times since we started out this afternoon. You wanted to
know how I found out that you were not going to tea with the prince.
Well, here is the truth. I asked the prince to change the day of your
visit to him."
Her fine, silky eyebrows came a little closer together.
"You asked him that?" she repeated.
John nodded.
"And he consented?"
"I will explain," John continued. "It was a most unfortunate
circumstance, but in the club, after lunch, the subject of spending the
afternoon came up. The prince spoke of an engagement. He was tied at
home, he said, from four to six. Some of the men began to chaff him, and
suggested that he was entertaining some lady friend, his latest
favorite--well, I dare say you can imagine the rest," John broke off.
"The prince, thoughtlessly, I am sure, and probably to get rid of them,
pleaded guilty. Then I came down to see you, and from what you said I
discovered that it was you who were to be his visitor."
Her fingers played nervously for a moment with the edge of the rug. She
drew it higher up.
"Well, when I left your house the first time this afternoon, I went
straight back to the prince. I pointed out to him that after what had
been said, as it might become known that you were his guest of to-day,
it would be better for him to postpone your visit. He agreed to do so."
"Was that all that passed between you?"
"Not quite," John replied. "He asked me what concern it was of mine, and
I told him exactly what my concern was. I told him I hoped that some day
you would be my wife."
She sat quite still, looking down upon the flaring lights. She was
filled with a restless desire to escape, to start the motor herself and
rush through the wet air into London and safety. And side by side with
that desire she knew that there was nothing in the world she wanted so
much as to stay just where she was, and to hear just the words she was
going to hear.
"So much for that!" John proceeded. "And now, please listen. I have
brought you out here because under these conditions I feel more master
of myself and my thoughts, and of the things I want to say to you.
Something takes me by the throat in your little drawing-room, with its
shaded lights, its perfume of flowers, and its atmosphere of perfection.
You sit enthroned there like the queen of a world I know nothing of, and
all the time letters and flowers and flattering invitations are showered
upon you from the greatest men in London. The atmosphere there stifles
me, Louise. Out here you are a woman and I a man, and those other things
fall away. I have tried my best to come a little way into sympathy with
your life. I want you now to make up your mind to come down a little way
into mine!"
She shook her head.
"We are still too far apart," she murmured. "Can't you understand that
yourself?"
"I have been a pupil for many months," he answered, turning toward her,
with one arm at the back of her cushions and the fingers of the other
hand suddenly seeking hers. "Can't you understand, if you do care a
little, if you have just a little flame of love in your heart for me,
that many of these other things which keep us apart are like the
lime-light which flashes out to give artificial light in an honest
darkness? Don't you believe, at the bottom of your heart, that you can
be happier if you will climb with me to the place where we first met,
even where the clouds lean over my own hills? You thought me very narrow
then. Perhaps I am. But I think you are beginning to understand, dear,
that that life is only a type. We can wander about where you will. My
hills are only the emblems of the things that are dear to me. There are
many countries I want to visit. I don't want to cramp your life. You
can't really be afraid of that, because it is the most widening thing in
the world that I have to give you--my love, the love of my heart and my
soul!"
She felt the sudden snapping of every nerve in her body, the passing
away of all sense of will or resistance. She was conscious only of the
little movement toward him, the involuntary yielding of herself. She lay
back in his arms, and the kisses which closed her eyes and lips seemed
to be working some strange miracle.
She was in some great empty space, breathing wonderful things. She was
on the hilltops, and from the heights she looked down at herself as she
had been--a poor little white-faced puppet, strutting about an
overheated stage, in a fetid atmosphere of adulation, with a brain
artificially stimulated, and a heart growing cold with selfishness. She
pitied herself as she had been. Then she opened her eyes with a start of
joy.
"How wonderful it all is!" she murmured. "You brought me here to tell me
this?"
"And to hear something!" he insisted.
"I have tried not to, John," she confessed, amazed at the tremble of her
sweet, low voice. Her words seemed like the confession of a weeping
child. "I cannot help it. I do love you! I have tried not to so hard,
but now--now I shall not try any more!"
They drove quietly down the long hill and through the dripping streets.
Not another word passed between them till they drew up outside her door.
She felt a new timidity as he handed her out, an immense gratitude for
his firm tone and intuitive tact.
"No, I won't come in, thanks," he declared. "You have so little time to
rest and get ready for the theater."
"You will be there to-night?" she asked.
He laughed as if there were humor in the suggestion of his absence.
"Of course!"
He slipped in his clutch and drove off through the rain-gleaming streets
with the smile and air of a conqueror. Louise passed into her little
house to find a visitor waiting for her there.