"I think that I felt that," she answered softly. "I think that that is why I came to you. Leopold has gone to one of his hiding-places—I do not know where—and he will not be back for several days. Please do not go far away. Be where I can telephone to you, or come."
"I wouldn't ask anything better," he promised.
Her eyes glowed for a moment. She gave him her hand impulsively, and he was dizzy with the strangeness and the joy of it. He had been so long debarred from intercourse with her sex that femininity was making a late but extraordinarily subtle appeal to him. He found himself, even in the moment when he was studying the colour of her eyes, counting the wasted years of his life, remembering with a sick regret the lines upon his face, the streak of grey in his hair.
"You are going back now to the Milan?" he enquired.
"From here. You could not——?"
"Of course I could," he assented eagerly, taking down his hat. "I promised to meet our friend Cresswell there."
"That ridiculous Poet!" she laughed. "Whatever made him a friend of yours?"
"He would tell you Fate," was the smiling reply. "Harvey Grimm would tell you a sense of humour. I really don't know what I could say about it. He isn't a bad fellow."
"You are sure you have no more business to attend to?" she asked earnestly. "I can sit and wait quite patiently while you finish."
He sighed as he closed his desk.