At the movement, he suddenly drew her towards him. "Tell me!" he said. "I want to know. I must know!"
For the first time since he had entered the room, her glance rested fully on his face. The light was uncertain, but as her gaze concentrated itself, a new look—a look of wonder and alarm—sprang across her eyes. In the seven days since they had spoken together, a change had fallen on him. Some alteration she could not define had grown into his expression; the cold mastery of himself and others was still visible; but a new emotion had insensibly been created—something powerful and even dominant—for which she could find no name. With a sharp, instinctive alarm, her lips parted.
"What is it?" she said, apprehensively. "Why are you here? The time has not come for you to go out into the world?"
A faintly ironic smile flitted across his lips.
"Surely, if one is a Prophet, one can alter even prophecies."
He said the words deliberately, looking down into her face.
The tone, the intentional flippancy of the words, came to her with a shock. It was as if, by considered action, he had set about jeopardizing his own dignity. A chill of undefined apprehension blew across her mind like a cold wind.
"I—I don't understand," she stammered. "How did you get here? How did you get away?"
Again his keen eyes searched hers.
"As for getting away," he said, slowly, "when a Prophet has a Precursor, he should be able to arrange these things. Five o'clock is a dull hour at Hellier Crescent. The Arch-Mystics are perusing the Scitsym; the Precursor is guarding the sacred threshold of the Prophet; the Prophet is—presumably—communing with his Soul. The routine of this evening differs in no way from the routine of any other evening—except that the Precursor is rather more than usually vigilant in his watch." Again the forced flippancy was apparent; and to Enid, staring at him with wide, perplexed eyes, there was something inexplicable and alarming in this new and unfamiliar attitude. With a tremor of foreboding, her glance travelled over his face.