"Why should he have sent?" she repeated to herself.
"I'll tell you something," continued Peter. "The chief will tell you when you see him. He has been summoned."
"My father?"
"Yes. He is needed."
"Where?"
"He won't tell me. But it's urgent. It means canceling his engagements here. Of course there's but one supposition."
"Russia?"
He nodded.
"I wish I could go with him," he said impetuously.
She looked at him, and his face was glowing. She had seen that look so many times on other faces, that wistful longing for the unnamed beautiful. It was what Markham MacLeod was always calling out in faces. They might be young, they might be the faces of those who had suffered long experience, but always it was those who were hungry, either with the hunger of youth or the delay of hope, the cruelty of time. He seemed to be the great necromancer, the great promiser. Could such promises come to naught?