The startled Mr. Collings gazed at her in fascinated horror.
“Is he crazy about you?” he gasped.
Diana smiled. She was adjusting her nose with the aid of a mirror concealed in the flap of her handbag.
“He will be,” she said softly.
CHAPTER II
Neither by nature crazy, nor by inclination eccentric, Mr. Gordon Selsbury had at moments serious but comfortable doubts as to whether he was not a little abnormal; whether he was not, in fine, one of those rare and gifted mortals to whom was given Vision beyond the ordinary. His environment was the commonplace City of London; his occupation a shrieking incongruity for a spiritual man—he was an insurance broker. And a prosperous insurance broker.
Sometimes he sat before the silver fire grate of his sitting-room, amazed at the contradictory evidence of his own genius. Here (said he, thinking impartially) was a man with a Conscious Soul, beside whom other men were clods, vegetables, animals of the field, slaves to their material demands. Lifted above the world and its peculiarly grimy interests, he was a man whose spiritual head rose above fog and was one with the snow-capped mountains and the blue skies. And yet—here was the truly astonishing thing—he could grapple most practically with these materialists and could tear from the clenched and frenzied paws large quantities of soiled and greasy money....
“No, Trenter, I shall be out to-morrow afternoon. Will you please tell Mr. Robert that I will see him at my office. Thank you, Trenter.”
Trenter inclined his head respectfully and went back to the telephone.
“No, sir, Mr. Selsbury will not be at home to-morrow.”