The simple words sank deep. They were music. This man had always had her loyal admiration. And now, as she sat facing him, she began to feel awed by a sense of all that he had done for her.
Suddenly a picture was flashed before her mind. Far away in America, in a backwater of a southern state, she saw her old parents hard pressed by modern conditions, but whose lot for nearly two years now she had been able to lighten with a liberal slice from her salary. It was going to be a terrible wrench to give up her life at the Office. And then John himself, would he, could he...?
The man who sat opposite seemed to read every thought she had.
“Hardly a matter upon which one is entitled to speak.”
The father again. “But, as I say, you mean so much to us in the Office—so please—please look before and after.”
A sense of being overcome by a great spirit afflicted her now. Here was an infinite power. She felt her defenses giving. The walls of the large room were beginning to press upon her. She was alone with the man in his own house, it was after midnight, she was at his mercy. Such fear was unworthy, but she was seized by a fierce desire to escape. There was the unknown to reckon with. At its beck, and under its fires, even her most sacred instincts were in danger of being subverted.
X
NEXT morning, as the clock struck eleven, the Chief entered his private room at the Office.
Punctuality, said his many biographers, was a cardinal fact in an amazing life. But Saul Hartz knew better.
As the Colossus sat down at his table, the mere look of him would have been enough to repute any theory so prosaic. The key of personality lay deeper. It was to be found in the eyes, curiously hooded like those of a bird of prey. In those undisclosed depths lurked the faculty of seeing into the future.