That was how she invited him to The Lone Cedar, the same being her famous bungalow on the Front.
IV
"Your son," said Lady Massulam, in a familiar tone, but most reassuringly like an aunt of Charlie's, after she had explained how they had met in Glasgow through being distantly connected by the same business deal, and how she had been impressed by Charlie's youthful capacity, "your son has very great talent for big affairs, but he is now playing a dangerous game—far more dangerous than he imagines, and he will not be warned. He is selling something he hasn't got before he knows what price he will have to pay for it."
"Ah!" breathed Mr. Prohack.
They were sitting together in the richly ornamented bungalow drawing-room, by the fire. Lady Massulam sat up straight in her sober and yet daring evening frock. Mr. Prohack lounged with formless grace in a vast easy-chair neighbouring a whiskey-and-soda. She had not asked him to smoke; he did not smoke, and he had no wish to smoke. She was a gorgeously mature specimen of a woman. He imagined her young, and he decided that he preferred the autumn to the spring. She went on talking of finance.
"She is moving in regions that Eve can never know," he thought. "But how did Eve perceive that she had taken a fancy to me?"
The alleged danger to Charlie scarcely disturbed him. Her appreciation or depreciation of Charlie interested him only in so far as it was a vehicle for the expression of her personality. He had never met such a woman. He responded to her with a vivacity that surprised himself. He looked surreptitiously round the room, brilliantly lighted here, and there obscure, and he comprehended how every detail of its varied sumptuosity aptly illustrated her mind and heart. His own heart was full of quite new sensations.
"Of course," she was saying, "if Charles is to become the really great figure that he might be, he will have to cure his greatest fault, and perhaps it is incurable."
"I know what that is," said Mr. Prohack, softly but positively.
"What is it?" Her glance met his.