"But what will become of you all?"
"We must scrape along. Frank must have his promised allowance or he'll never get along in the service, and five hundred pounds a year is a big slice out of a thousand. Jim, too, spends a great deal. Uncle Rad never stinted him with money, for it was he who wanted Jim to be in the Blues. Now he may have to exchange into a less expensive regiment. I think Edie will marry soon—Reggie Duggan has been in love with her for the past two years—she may make up her mind now."
"But you, Luke?"
He did not know if he ought to tell her of his plans. The ostrich farm out in Africa—the partnership offered to him by a cousin of his mother's who was doing remarkably well, but who was getting old and wanted the companionship of one of his kind. It was a living anyway—but a giving up of everything that had constituted life in the past—and the giving up of his exquisite Lou. How could he ask her to share that life with him?—the primitive conditions, the total absence of luxuries, the rough, every-day existence?
And Lou, so perfectly dressed, so absolutely modern and dainty, waited on hand and foot——
But she insisted, seeing that he was hesitating and was trying to keep something from her.
"What about you, Luke?"
He had not time to reply, for from the hall below a shrill voice called to them both by name.
"Mr. de Mountford, Miss Harris, the young people want to dance. You'll join in, won't you?"
Already he was on his feet, every trace of emotion swept away from his face, together with every crease from his immaculate dress clothes, and every stray wisp of hair from his well-groomed head. Not a man, torn with passion, fighting the battle of life against overwhelming odds, casting away from him the hand which he would have given his last drop of blood to possess—only the man of the world, smiling while his very soul was being wrung—only the puppet dancing to the conventional world's tune.