"I will see that it is sent to her at once," he promised. "You are in my sanctum, are you not? You can pursue your tête-à-tête there without interruption. You are a very much envied man!"
"Mme. Calavera is there," John replied. "As for me, I am afraid I shall have to go now."
The smile faded from the prince's lips. His eyebrows came slowly together.
"You are leaving?" he repeated.
"I must!" John insisted. "I can't help it. Forgive my behaving like a boor, but I must go. Good night!"
The prince stretched out his hand, but he was too late.
It was twenty minutes past two o'clock when John left Grosvenor Square, and it was twenty minutes to five when a sleepy hall-porter took him up in the lift to his rooms on the fourth floor at the Milan. The intervening space of time was never anything to him but an ugly and tangled sheaf of memories.
His first overwhelming desire had been simply to escape from that enervating and perfervid atmosphere, to feel the morning air cool upon his forehead, to drink in great gulps of the fresh, windy sweetness. He felt as if poison had been poured into his veins, as if he had tampered with the unclean things of life.
He found himself, after a few minutes' hurried walking, in Piccadilly. The shadows that flitted by him, lingering as he approached and offering their stereotyped greeting, filled him with a new horror. He turned abruptly down Duke Street and made his way to St. James's Park. From here he walked slowly eastward. When he reached the Strand, however, the storm in his soul was still unabated. He turned away from the Milan. The turmoil of his passions drove him to the thoughts of flight. Half an hour later he entered St. Pancras Station.
"What time is the next train north to Kendal or Carlisle?" he inquired.