"It is a long, hard struggle, Stonehouse," he would say. "There are more fools in this world than you could conceive possible. Thank your stars your friend isn't one of them. A fine, intelligent woman—a unique woman."
He talked a good deal about Christine and women in general.
"When once we can get them on our side," was one of his dark sayings, "the last trench will be in our hands."
Then, one evening, to Robert's astonished displeasure, he walked home with him, and somehow drifted up their dark stairs to the little sitting-room where Christine was laying supper. It appeared that he had come to give an account of his pupil's progress, but he was oddly excited, and when Christine invited him to share their meal—surely he could have seen there wasn't enough to go round, Robert thought—he accepted with a transparent, childlike eagerness that made Robert stare at him as at a stranger. And after supper, with the self-conscious air of a man who has waited for this moment, be produced from his coat pocket a crumpled newspaper with the title Unshackled printed in aggressive letters on its pale-green cover.
"In my leisure time I write a good deal on a subject very dear to me, Miss Forsyth," he said and screwed up his sharp nose in a kind of nervous anguish. "I have here an article published last week—you are a broad-minded, intelligent woman—I thought perhaps it might interest you—if you would care to glance over it."
Christine lay back in her chair, her face in shadow. But the lamplight fell on her two hands. Red and misshapen as they were now, they were still noble hands, and their repose had dignity and beauty.
"Won't you read it to us, Mr. Ricardo? My eyes are tired at night."
He cleared his throat.
"It is an answer to Bishop Crawford's recent letter to The Times, which you may have seen. I have called it 'Unmasking the Oracle.'"
Robert leant out of the window and watched the sun sink into mist and smoke. He wished Mr. Ricardo hadn't come; and that he would go away soon. In a few minutes the light would begin to die, and the sharp black lines of the roofs and spires, which on the ruins of their dull selves seemed to be built anew into a witchlike fantastic city, would be lost to him for another night. Robert did not want to hear about God and the origin of man now. He kicked impatiently. Christine would sit up later than ever. And, besides with Mr. Ricardo's voice rising and falling, growing shriller and more passionate, one could not listen to that low, mysterious hum that was so like a far-off music.