Neither had they wholly taken from her the memory of a man's eyes, straight and honest and strangely appealing, that had looked into hers only a couple of hours before.
Above her mother's warnings, above all the trouble and the tumult of her soul, she heard a voice within, clear, insistent, indomitable: "Love is only gained by love. We must pour out all we have to win it, purge our hearts of all selfish desire, sanctify ourselves by the complete renunciation of self, before the perfect gift can be ours."
The perfect gift! The perfect gift! She had almost ceased to believe in it. But that night she dreamed that she had it in her grasp.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE WHIRLPOOL
"Well, Billings, you're looking as cadaverously blooming as ever. How do you do it, man? Did someone give you an over-dose of respectability in your youth?"
Saltash leaned back in his chair smiling up at his wry-faced servitor with insolent humour.
Billings, the decorous, betrayed not the smallest sign of surprise or resentment. It was said of him that when Saltash had once in a fit of anger flung a wine-glass at his head, he had knelt and collected the fragments and mopped up the wine before he had dreamed of retiring to attend to the cut on his face that the glass had inflicted.
On the present occasion he made response with the utmost gravity. "I can't say, my lord. Shall I light the fire, my lord?"
"Oh yes, it's a filthy day, typical of a filthy climate. Yes, light the fire, and pull down the blinds, and let's be comfortable!"