"There's just one thing," began Lord Mackworth in a cautious whisper, though previously he had put no restraint on his powerful voice, and paused.
"Will you come in?" she invited him, also in a whisper, and moved quickly from his line of sight. He followed her, and having entered her room softly shut the door, which at the previous interview had remained half open.
"Will you sit down?"
They both sat down in their original positions. Yes, they were like friends. More, they were like conspirators. Why? What would the next moment disclose? It seemed to her that the next moment must unfold into an unpredictable, beautiful blossom such as nobody had ever seen. She was intensely excited. She desired ardently that he should ask her to help him in some matter in which she alone could help him. She was a touching, wistful spectacle. All her defences had sunk away. He could not but see that he had made a conquest, that the city of loveliness had fallen into his hands.
"It just occurred to me--please tell me if I'm being indiscreet--that perhaps you wouldn't mind doing me a little service. I may oversleep myself in the morning, and I can't get at my man now. Would you mind giving me a ring up on the 'phone about six o'clock? You see, I have the telephone by my bed, and it would be sure to wake me--especially if you told the operator to keep on ringing. It's very necessary I should run along to the newspaper office and see the editor personally as soon as he gets there. Otherwise I might be done in. Of course, I could sit up for the rest of the night----" He laughed shortly.
Nearly opposite the end of Clifford Street, in Bond Street, was a hosier's shop with the royal arms over the entrance and half a dozen pairs of rich blue-and-crimson pyjamas--and nothing else--displayed in the window against a chaste background of panelled acacia wood. Lilian saw a phantasm of her client's lordly chamber, with the bed and the telephone by the bed, and the great form of the man himself recumbent and moveless, gloriously and imperfectly covered in a suit of the blue-and-crimson pyjamas. She heard the telephone bell ring--ring--ring--ring--ring--ring, pertinaciously. The figure did not stir. Ring--ring--ring--ring! At last the figure stirred, turned over, half sat up, seized the telephone, which, pacified, ceased to ring, and the figure listened--to her voice! It was her voice that was heard in the chamber.... The most sharply masculine hallucination that she had ever had, perhaps the only one. It moved her to the point of fright. The whole house might have rocked under her--rocked once, and then resumed its firmness. She felt faint, terror-struck, and excruciatingly, inexplicably happy. And she was ashamed; she was shocked by the mystery of herself. Flushing, she bent her face over the desk.
"Perhaps I'd better sit up all night," Lord Mackworth added apologetically.
"What's your number?" she asked in a low voice, not looking up.
"Regent 1067."
"Regent 1067," she repeated the number, even writing it on her note pad.