Billings came up behind him soft-footed, unobtrusive. "The rose light, my lord, was placed on the other side according to your lordship's orders," he said deferentially, and passed on as if he had not spoken.
Saltash glanced over his shoulder momentarily, and resumed his silent contemplation of the figure in the shadows.
Several seconds passed. Then very suddenly he moved again, bent swiftly and pressed another switch. In a moment the figure was fully visible again, but no longer did it dazzle the eyes with its whiteness. A soft rose radiance surrounded it. It glowed into life, pulsing, palpitating flesh and blood.
And the man's eyes suddenly kindled as they passed over the naked, straining form. "I have you now, my Captured Angel," he murmured.
He stood and feasted upon the vision. Once he stretched a hand to touch the faultless curve of the breast, but checked himself with an odd, flickering smile as though he did reverence whimsically to a sacred element in which he had no faith. The agonized shame of the thing, poignant, arresting, though it was, seemed wholly to pass him by. His queer, glancing eyes saw only the unveiled voluptuousness of the form, the perfect contour of the limbs, the exquisite moulding of each full and gracious line. He dwelt upon them all with the look of an epicure. He moved again at length, drew near to the statue, reached a hand to the dark panelling of the recess behind. It slipped inwards noiselessly, disclosing a narrow doorway. In a moment he had passed through, and the great hall was empty; empty save for that figure of tragic womanhood, rose-lighted, piteously alive, standing out against the shadows.
It was nearly half an hour later that an electric bell sounded through the silence, and Billings, the respectable, came noiselessly through the hall. He swung the great door open with a well-bred flourish.
A woman's figure clad in a streaming waterproof stood on the step, and in a low voice asked for Lord Saltash. Billings stood back with a deep bow. "Will you walk in, madam?"
She entered and stood on the mat. He took her umbrella and set it aside.
"Will you permit me to remove your waterproof, madam?" he suggested.
She seemed to hesitate, but in a moment yielded. "But I can only stay a few moments," she said. "Please tell him so!"