"I am immensely interested in your aims, Jack, and your method of working for them. If one is not sure of one's self, tact and diplomacy help one to feel one's way; but there is a higher gift than these, and I believe you have it—it is strength."
He turned round, facing the fireplace, feeling suddenly chilled. In the hall a clock struck two, and a weary-faced footman looked suggestively in.
"Good gracious! is it already two?" she said, picking up her unopened post; "and I have not read these yet. They must wait; I know by the feel of them they are uninteresting."
She turned and faced him, standing in the full blaze of the electric light, her face brilliantly illuminated. She had thrown back her cloak, her white bosom moved slowly and gently to her breathing, and his eyes were dazzled at her incomparable beauty. And all this, the perfect bloom of womanhood, this lily in a leper settlement, had been his. Instead he had preferred outwardly the rouge and the dye, inwardly the vulgar flashiness and tawdry wit of her who had so long been his mistress. At the moment he felt he loathed Mildred. Once he tried to speak and could not, and she had turned again.
"Good-night, Jack," she said over her shoulder. "You must be tired. I shall be excited to see what the unofficial Government organs make of you. Will you tell them to put the lights out when you go upstairs?"
He stood where he was listening to the diminuendo whisper of her dress. Then, after a moment, he heard the door of her bedroom shut behind her.
Quite a quantity of unknown, though probably not obscure, leader-writers bestowed their distinguished attention on Jack next day. The Daily Chronicle and Daily News announced that they had had the sagacity months before to foresee this split in the Conservative party, and hailed Jack as a prodigal son returning to the depleted homesteads of Liberalism. The Standard, on the other hand, grabbed him as the homme nécessaire of the Conservative party; the Times, gently trimming, admitted that to a certain extent, and subject to various conditions, there was something in what he said; the Daily Telegraph clearly did not know what to think, and fell back on generalities about 9.7 guns; while a few hours later the Westminster Gazette had a cartoon entitled "Jack the Ripper," in which he was represented with an impassive face methodically disembowelling the present Cabinet—a signpost indicated Hatfield. The effect on the press, in fact, was very satisfactory; opinions were widely divergent and extremely violent. In fact, as Jack said to Marie when he saw her next morning, he seemed to have "caught on."
"And what do you suppose they will think?" asked Marie.