He put his arms round her and drew her close.
“We have had it, beloved. It has been beyond anything I ever dreamt. Only—” his voice broke a little, “we must remember it had to be paid for—No, no,” he cried, seeing the wave of sorrow sweep over her face, “not you. It is I who should have known and listened. My fault!”
“It is I who should have spoken,” she said steadily, “we can’t divide ourselves even in this, dear, but we can bear it together.”
“And pay the debt together,” he added and raised her face to his and kissed her. And they crossed the Threshold of the New with this understanding between them.
CHAPTER XXXVI
In the great buildings in Princes Street, Birmingham, the days continued as of old, with the ebb and flow of business. On each floor clerks bent over their high desks and the workers of each concern sat behind their mahogany defences and toiled early and late for the treasure they desired. At stated times rows of grave gentlemen, who carried due notice of their own importance on their countenances, met in the respective committee rooms, and discussed wide interests with closed doors and a note of anxious irritation that was new since the demise of Peter Masters.
He who had concentrated the whole of the executive business of these many affairs under one roof had done so of definite purpose and with no eye to merely his own convenience. His presence there was a tangible power offering a final court of appeal that, whether they knew it or not, had as great an effect on the various committees as it had on the managers of each business themselves.
So perfect was the organisation and adjustment of the machinery of routine that after the dominant visible power had gone down to the land of shadows, the vague note of personal anxiety that lurked on each floor was the only perceptible change apparent in the great body.