"How can it be? I'm almost crazy to-night! Do it, that's all, and draw on me to the limit!"
"To the limit, Mr. Rawn?"
"To the limit!" He looked her straight in the eye, and she met his gaze fully. She shivered slightly again, but her delicately clean-cut face showed no further sign. Only she shivered, and pulled her wrap a trifle closer about her shoulders.
"Very well," she said. "I may have to draw on you—and myself, too."
"It's all in the game, Jennie—we've got to play it together—we're two of the same sort—we've got to climb, to succeed. We run well together. One must help the other's hand."
"Yes, it's a game," she answered; and so rose, and left him without further word.
VIII
John Rawn followed her up the stair, mumbling some sort of conjugal affection, but she left him at the landing and passed toward her own apartments down the hall, giving him hardly even a look of farewell. He followed her with his eyes, standing a little time, his hand resting on the lintel of his own door.
Alone, Rawn seated himself in the Elizabethan armchair devised by his most favored decorator as fitting for this Elizabethan room. A vast oak bed, heavily carved, with deep and heavy curtains, represented the decorator's idea of what the Virgin Queen preferred. The walls were deeply carved in wainscot and cornice. A rude attempt was made at strength and simplicity in this, the sanctum of the master of Graystone Hall. Granted the aid of a lively imagination, this might have been the apartment of some feudal lord of another day; as the designer and architect had not failed delicately to suggest to Mr. Rawn.
It is possible that in the time of Elizabeth pier glasses with heavily carved frames were not common in the size affected by Mr. Rawn in his private apartment. He stood before the great glass now and gazed at what he saw; a face haggard and lined, shoulders stooping a little forward, body a little stooped, a little heavy, a little soft; the watch charm hanging in free air—the figure of a man no longer athletic, if ever so.