"How did you get here?" he was insisting. "How did you know I might be over here? You hadn't met Electra."
Then the stranger dropped the hands he held and turned to her.
"I haven't met her yet," he said, with a humorous consideration that stirred her heart. "Is this Electra?" He put out his hand, and she laid hers in the waiting palm. She felt bound to something by the magnetic grasp. The certainty was not weakened by any knowledge that other men and women felt the same.
Madam Fulton came in then. She had removed the traces of past emotion, but with the red still burning in her cheeks she looked very pretty. MacLeod greeted her with an extreme deference, which presently slipped into the ordinary courtesy of man to woman as he found she had no desire to exact any special consideration. They went out to luncheon with that air of accelerated life which contributes to the success of an occasion, and then MacLeod talked. Rose sat silent, looking on with a sad indifference, as at a scene she had witnessed many times before, to no good end, and Madam Fulton listened rather satirically. But Electra and Peter glowed and could hardly eat, and MacLeod addressed himself chiefly to them. Now he did exactly what was expected of him. The brotherhood of man was his theme, and it was no mere effusion of sympathetic propaganda. His memory was his immense storehouse behind emotion, his armory. He could mobilize facts and statistics until the ordinary mind owned itself cowed by them. When they rose from the table, the millennium was imminent, and it had been brought by the sword. At the library door, Peter, beside Electra for an instant, irrepressibly seized her hand, as it hung by her side, and gave it passionate pressure. Instantly she looked at him, responsive. The sympathy they lacked in their personal relation sprang to life under MacLeod's trumpeting. Electra was in a glow, and Peter, with a surprised delight, felt all his old allegiance to his imperial lady.
MacLeod would not sit down.
"I must catch my train," he said.
There was outcry at once from two quarters. He was not to return to the city. He was to stay here, Peter declared. It was absurd, it was unthinkable that he should do anything else. MacLeod took it with a friendly smile and the air of deprecating such undeserved cordiality; but he looked at Electra, who was frankly beseeching him from brilliant eyes. It was settled finally that he should go back to his hotel for a day or two, see some newspaper men and meet a few public engagements, and then return for a little stay.
"Get your hat," he said to Rose, in affectionate suggestion, "and walk with me to the station."
And as it became apparent that father and daughter had had no time for intimate talk, they were allowed to go away together, Peter following them with impetuous stammering adjurations to MacLeod to rattle through his business and come back. When they were out upon the highroad, MacLeod turned to Rose.
"Well," he said, "you don't look very fit."