She clasped her arms around his neck, and whispered to him, quite low, with a kiss:
“Not yet, father.”
“After I am gone?”
“Yes.”
He held her a moment closer against him, as he had done when she was a little girl in the old days and he had put protecting arms about her. He loved the feeling that she was his yet, but hesitated to accept the delay his daughter’s love imposed on her. Facing the glass in his cabinet, he could see the image of the group they formed. With one stroke it showed the changes that had been wrought in him within one year’s time.
“To-morrow,” he reflected, “I shall have saved Maurice, and my task will be finished. It won’t be long after that. I shan’t make old bones.”
Bending over the clear face, he pressed his lips there, as a sign of his acceptance. Then, coming back again to what was uppermost in his mind, he banished tenderness, and made his arrangements for the battle.
“Have dinner at eight,” he ordered. “I’ve almost two hours ahead of me, time to refresh myself on the details of this brief, which I know pretty well already. I’ll go to bed at nine, and get up at three in the morning. From three to nine, before the opening of court, I’ll get my argument in hand.”
“Very well, father. There’s a letter from Lyons from Germaine. Her heart is with us.”
“You can read it to me at dinner,” he said.