The letter from Olga ran as follows:
"Dear Mr. Faversham,—I have just discovered your address, and I am writing to congratulate you on the fine position you have won. It must be glorious to be a Member of the Mother of Parliaments, to be a legislator in this great free country. I rejoice, too, that you have espoused the cause of the toilers, the poor. It is just what I hoped and expected of you. You will become great, my friend; my heart tells me so. Your country will be proud of you.
"I wonder whether, if in spite of your many interests and duties, you will have time to visit a lonely woman? There are so many things I would like to discuss with you. Do come if you can. I shall be home to-morrow afternoon, and again on Friday. Will you not have pity on me?—Yours,
Olga Petrovic."
Dick saw that her address was a fashionable street in Mayfair, and almost unconsciously he pictured her in her new surroundings. She was no longer among a wild-eyed, long-haired crew in the East End, but in the centre of fashion and wealth. He wondered what it meant. He read the letter a second time, and in a way he could not understand, he was fascinated. There was subtle flattery in every line, a kind of clinging tenderness in every sentence.
No mention was made of their last meeting, but Dick remembered. She had come to him after that wonderful experience in Staple Inn—on the morning after his eyes had been opened to the facts about what a number of Bolshevists wanted to do in England. His mind had been bewildered, and he was altogether unsettled. He was afraid he had acted rudely to her. He had thought of her as being associated with these people. If he had yielded to her entreaties, and thrown himself into the plans she had made, might he not have become an enemy to his country, to humanity?
But what a glorious creature she was! What eyes, what hair, what a complexion! He had never seen any woman so physically perfect. And, added to all this, she possessed a kind of charm that held him, fascinated him, made him think of her whether he would or not.
And yet her letter did not bring him unmixed pleasure. In a way he could not understand he was slightly afraid of her, afraid of the influence she had over him. He could not mistake the meaning of her words at their last meeting. She had made love to him, she had asked him to marry her. It is true he had acted as though he misunderstood her, but what would have happened if old Hugh Stanmore and Beatrice had not come? The very mystery which surrounded her added to her charm. Who was she? Why did she go to the East End to live, and how did she possess the means to live in Mayfair?
He walked around his little room, thinking hard. For the last few days his parliamentary duties had excited him, kept him from brooding; but now in the quietness of the night he felt his loneliness, realised his longing for society. His position as a Labour Member was perfectly plain. His confrères were good fellows. Most of them were hard-headed, thoughtful men who took a real interest in their work. But socially they were not of his class. They had few interests in common, and he realised it, even as they did. That was why they looked on him with a certain amount of suspicion. What was to be his future then? A social gulf was fixed between him and others whose equal he was, and whatever he did he would be outside the circle of men and women whose tastes were similar to his own.
No, that was not altogether true. Hugh Stanmore and Beatrice treated him as a friend. Beatrice!
The very thought of her conjured up all sorts of fancies. He had not heard from her, or of her since his visit to Wendover. Was she engaged to Sir George Weston, he wondered?
He knew now that he had never loved Lady Blanche Huntingford. He had been attracted to her simply because of her looks, and her social position. At the time she had appealed to him strongly, but that was because he had regarded her as a means whereby he could attain to his social ambitions. But a change had come over him since then—a subtle, almost indescribable change. The strange events of his life had led him to see deeper. And he knew he had no love for this patrician woman. When he had seen her last she had not caused one heart-throb, he was almost indifferent to her.