They went through and were met by a white circular staircase. Up this they passed, paused before another door, and crossed the threshold into a high circular brilliantly-lit room. For the moment Harkness, his eyes dimmed a little by the shadows of the staircase, could see nothing but the gayness, brightness of the place papered with a wonderful Chinese pattern of green and purple birds, cherry-coloured pagodas and crimson temples. The carpet was a soft heavy purple, and there was a number of little gilt chairs, and, in front of the narrow barred window, a gilt cage with a green and crimson macaw.
All this, standing by the door shading his eyes from the dazzling crystal candelabra, he took in. Then suddenly saw something that swept away the rest—Hesther and Dunbar standing together, hand in hand, by the window. He gave a cry of joy, hurrying towards them. It was as though he had not seen them for years; they caught his hand in theirs; Crispin was there watching them like a benevolent father with his beloved children.
"That's right," he said. "Make the most of your time together. I want you to have a last talk."
He sat down on one of the gilt chairs.
"Won't you sit down? In a moment I shall leave you alone together for a little while. In case you have any last words. . . ." Then he leaned forward in that fashion so familiar now to Harkness, huddled together, his red hair and little eyes and pale white soft hands alone alive. "Well, and so—in my power, are you not? The three of you. You can laugh at my ugliness and my stupidity and my bad character, but now you are in my hands completely. I can do whatever I like with you. Whatever . . . the last shame, the last indignity, the uttermost pain. I, ludicrous creature that I am, have absolute power over three fine young things like you, so strong, so beautiful. And then more power and then more and then more. And over many finer, grander, more beautiful than you. I can say crawl and you will crawl, dance and you will dance. . . . I who am so ugly that every one has always laughed at me. I am a little God, and perhaps not so little, and soon God Himself. . . ."
He broke off, making the movement of music in the air with his hands.
"You a little overestimate the situation," said Harkness, quietly. "For the moment you can do what you like with our bodies because you happen to have two servants who, with their Jiu-Jitsu and the rest of their tricks, are stronger than we are. It is not you who are stronger, but your servants whom your money is able to buy. I guess if I had you tied to a pillar and myself with a gun in my hand I could make you look pretty small. And in any case it is only our bodies that you can do anything with. Ourselves—our real selves—you can't touch."
"Is that so?" said Crispin. "But I have not begun. The fun is all to come. We will see whether I can touch you or no. And for my daughter-in-law"—he looked at Hesther—"there is plenty of time—many years perhaps."
Nothing in all his life would ever appeal more to Harkness than Hesther then. From the first moment of his sight of her what had attracted him had been the exquisite mingling of the child and of the woman. She had been for him at first some sort of deserted waif who had experienced all the cruelty and harshness of life so desperately early that she had known life upside down, and this had given her a woman's endurance and fortitude. She was like a child who has dressed up in her mother's clothes for a party and then finds that she must take her mother's place.
And now when she must, after this terrible night, be physically beyond all her resources she seemed, in her shabby ill-made dress, her hair disordered, her face pale, her eyes ringed with grey, to have a new courage that must be similar to that which he had himself been given. She kept her hand in Dunbar's, and with a strange dim unexpected pain Harkness realised that new relation between the two of which he had made the foundation had grown through danger and anxiety the one for another already to a fine height. Then he was conscious that Hesther was speaking. She had come forward quite close to Crispin and stood in front of him looking him calmly and clearly in the eyes.