Hardly had the door closed behind her when Sir Peter rushed to the house-telephone. "James!" called Sir Peter. "James! Bring the admiral in here at once."
CHAPTER XXXVII
1
Dazed, hopeless, almost beaten, Aliette passed out of the offices of Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright.
The sun had already set. The Embankment showed steel-gray and violet; fantastic under a fantastic sky. Trams clanged by her. Taxis. Cars. She did not see them. She did not see London. She saw the country, the country under a March sunset. It seemed to her that she was riding; riding alone; riding for defeat in a desperate race.
Automatically her feet turned away from the sunset--eastward from Norfolk Street toward the Temple. Above her, the sky darkled. Lamps gleamed along the Embankment. But no lamp of hope gleamed in her mind. There was no way out of the cage. The book could be altered, the will destroyed. Hector, blackmailed, might bring his action. What did that matter? Freedom, even won, must come too late. Ronnie's child, the child soon to stir in her womb, would be a bastard. A bastard!
She must go to Ronnie. She must tell him the truth. The awful truth.
And suddenly, her brain clearing a little, she knew that she was standing at the gates of the Temple. Ronnie was in there--in there--barely a hundred yards away--behind those railings--across that misty lawn--among the lights and the pinnacles. Ronnie would help her. The law would help. Surely, surely man's law was not so cruel to man's women?
The gate of the Temple stood open. Slowly, she went toward the gate. Behind her she heard the vague ripple of the river, of London's river. The river called to her. "Come to me," rippled London's river, "I am the way out--the one way out of the cage."