Again Loder made an interruption, but again she checked him. “No,” she said, still smiling. “You should never attempt such a task. Shall I tell you why?”
He stood silent, puzzled and interested.
“Because,” she said, quickly, “when a woman really is—interested, the man's career ranks infinitely higher in her eyes than any personal desire for power.”
For a moment their eyes met, then abruptly Loder looked away. She had gauged his intentions incorrectly, yet with disconcerting insight. Again the suggestion of an unusual personality below the serenity of her manner recurred to his imagination.
With an impulse altogether foreign to him he lifted his head and again met her glance. Then at last he spoke, but only two words. “Forgive me!” he said, with simple, direct sincerity.
XXII
After his interview with Eve, Loder retired to the study and spent the remaining hours of the day and the whole span of the evening in work. At one o'clock, still feeling fresh in mind and body, he dismissed Greening and passed into Chilcote's bedroom. The interview with Eve, though widely different from the one he had anticipated, had left him stimulated and alert. In the hours that followed it there had been an added anxiety to put his mind into harness, an added gratification in finding it answer to the rein.
A pleasant sense of retrospection settled upon him as he slowly undressed; and a pleasant sense of interest touched him as, crossing to the dressing-table, he caught sight of Chilcote's engagement-book—taken with other things from the suit he had changed at dinner-time and carefully laid aside by Renwick.
He picked it up and slowly turned the pages. It always held the suggestion of a lottery—this dipping into another man's engagements and drawing a prize or a blank. It was a sensation that even custom had not dulled.