She felt the beat of her heart strike upwards. Her throat was filled by it. He sounded hardly more than a laughing, irresponsible boy. And yet the hour was surely near when even his lighter grace notes must prove organ tones in the strained ear of the time.
III
THE fates were at her elbow. As she sent for the Evening Press, she realized that fact to the full. Afraid to turn again to her occupation of the last three hours, the weighing of her love for John Endor, she was yet unable to escape the challenge of a dire event. Truly a woman, yet beyond all things she was an American citizen. No matter what his spells, she could never marry a man of these ideas. Her country must stand first.
The Evening Press arrived. Folding back the sheet, the rather unpretty sheet with its crude headlines and blurred ink, she placed a finger on the fatal paragraph.
While he read she watched him. But his face was hidden by the paper and it was not until a slow perusal was at an end that it came again into view. So great was the change that it struck her almost with fear. The allure was gone; such a depth of pallor had the look of death itself. But the eyes were blazing and the large, mobile orator’s mouth was clenched in a vain effort to control its emotion.
“Blackguards!” he gasped. She saw that in his eyes were tears. Her brain was numb, yet the glow racing through her veins was sheer joy. The question was answered; every doubt was laid. So much for the woman. And in that moment the woman was paramount. But in the balanced mind, delicately poised, acutely commonsensible, was now a concern beyond the personal. What was the meaning of it all?
“I knew of course ... I felt ... that you had been ... misreported.”... Her words were tentative, inadequate. Painfully watching the man opposite she knew only too well that the John Endor of three minutes back might never have been. The play, the interplay, of changing lights upon his face and in his eyes were beyond her ken. Almost for the first time she began to have a real perception of the infinities within him, of that central power which could sweep a great audience off its feet.
Of a sudden he sprang fiercely from his chair. “It’s devilish!” His voice was hoarse. “Absolutely devilish!”
Hardly had he used the words when the pain in her eyes reined him back. Abruptly as he had risen, he sat down again at the table. “I beg your pardon!” he said. “But, you see, it’s a stab in the back—from the world’s most accomplished assassin.”
She saw that his lips were white and that his face was drawn.