“Yes, I quite think so,” Wygram agreed. “Every mind becomes subdued to that in which it works. But I do feel that human life was never exposed to so many hidden perils as to-day.”
“One feels that, too,” said Helen. “Indeed,”—she shivered slightly—“the truth of that somehow strikes to one’s marrow.”
As she spoke, she was sharply aware that the man at her side was looking at her with a grave curiosity.
“Forgive the question,” he said, in his soft voice, “if it should seem impertinent,—but do you say that as a private member of the community, or as the wife of a man to whom so many eyes now turn in the hope that he may be able to do a great and much needed work for us all?”
Girt by the thought that Saul Hartz was at another table and that no fragment of their talk was likely to reach his ear, Helen confessed that she was now haunted, not so much on her own account as on that of her husband, by a great fear.
Something in her manner seemed to impress Wygram deeply. “Tell me,” he said, in a voice hardly above a whisper, “just what it is that you fear in regard to him in the near future?”
“It is too vague to be put into words,” said Helen, anxiously. But again she shivered, and again Wygram looked at her with his questioning eyes.
He forbore, however, from pressing the point further. So sharp was her distress that he gave the subject an adroit turn, and did not refer to it again. But this talk, all the same, made a profound impression upon Helen.
Next morning she breakfasted early, at the beck of a strong desire to catch the first possible train. London, her home, her husband were calling her. A second night of very little sleep had made Cloudesley and its surroundings almost intolerable. She was oppressed by a sense of being urgently needed elsewhere. Hour by hour, a conviction had gained strength in her mind that something was about to happen to John.
Perhaps “the something” had happened already. Who could say? An obsession seized her that such was the case. At all events, the breaking of his engagement for the week-end, without being able to give a reason, a proceeding altogether unlike him, lent color to this new and harsh belief. Both Hartz and Wygram, men whose every word meant much, had dropped more than one hint that her husband was in the toils of ineluctable fate.