Sir Powers Fiske approached her. His eyes held hers—they were bright with a certain steely radiance. She felt her heart beating fast, the noise of the traffic beyond seemed to her to come from some distance. He spoke to her, and her eyes which mirrored dark months lost resentment after a moment and seemed to understand.
They gazed steadfastly at one another—something greater than their surroundings, greater even than themselves seemed to pass between them. With swift intelligence, she felt him to be no more a boulevardier than she was light. He murmured a few conventionalities and when he asked her to have tea with him she accepted. Inside the warm little tea-room, he told her of his work and of himself, and once secure in the knowledge of the mere unit of humanity she represented to him, she told him of herself. The human note was strong in all she said, and he declared in all her talk the marks of a cultured intellect that must have rendered beyond endurance the shoddy environment of a draper's establishment where she passed her days. He offered her the means of escape from her present slavery by becoming his subject for experiment and she did not shrink. On her own testimony she stood alone in the world and upon her sudden removal from her present life there would be no one with even the right to search for her. He looked into her frail beautiful face marveling at the depth of misery which produced this brave despair and rising held out his hand.
"I must thank you very much for your society—and for your confidence," he said, "I have your address and I will write to you."
To-night he was in a curiously disturbed mood. All the evening Eleanor Surtoes had figured in his thoughts. He had seen her several times since that first meeting on the Edgware Road. She was one of the more tragic figures in that world which he had spent so much strenuous effort seeking to understand. The possibilities in connection with her loomed large in his imagination. He was oppressed with fears which were altogether new to him. Fortune could never have provided him with a human creature modeled more exactly according to his requirements. He knew her life and the ways of it. The confidence which he felt as to her ultimate decision was not exaggerated. She would come to him for an explanation of his words, and she would accept his proposition. Yet never since his idea had first begun to loom large in his thoughts did he look upon it with less enthusiasm than at this moment. A few hours ago he had written to her—asked her to spend a day upon the river with him. He knew that she would come. The crisis was close at hand. He hoped to be able to delay it.
The door was quietly opened. His servant stood upon the threshold.
"There is a young lady asking for you, Sir Powers—the name, I believe, is Surtoes."
"Show her in at once."
The man bowed. A moment later he ushered Eleanor in. Her hat was beaten about with wind and rain, even her hair was disordered. She was breathless with rapid walking, her cheeks were wet, and the raindrops hung about her clothes. Powers held out his hand and drew her toward the fire.
"So you have come to see me," he said, in a tone as nearly matter-of-fact as he could make it. "I am delighted! I was just looking forward to a lonely and a particularly dull evening."
He wheeled an easy chair to the fire, and placed her in it. He saw that she was nervous and embarrassed, and he continued to talk.