"No, my housekeeper wanted to talk to her. Come along."
And in the waiting-room, full of permanent examples of the results of Mr. Rentoul Smiles's spiritual attitude towards his fellow-men, Edward Henry was presented to Isabel Joy. The next instant the two men and the housekeeper had unobtrusively retired, and he was alone with his objective. In truth, Seven Sachs was a notable organizer.
III
She was sitting down in a cosy-corner, her feet on a footstool, and she seemed a negligible physical quantity as he stood in front of her. This was she who had worsted the entire judicial and police system of Chicago, who spoke pentecostal tongues, who had circled the globe, and held enthralled—so journalists computed—more than a quarter of a million of the inhabitants of Marseilles, Athens, Port Said, Candy, Calcutta, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Hawaii, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Denver, Chicago, and lastly, New York! This was she!
"I understand we're going home on the same ship!" he was saying.
She looked up at him, almost appealingly.
"You won't see anything of me, though," she said.
"Why not?"
"Tell me," said she, not answering his question, "what do they say of me, really, in England? I don't mean the newspapers. For instance, well—the Azure Society. Do you know it?"
He nodded.