The Senator and his daughter rise, and walk forward to meet them. Gerald and Nancy remain behind. Indeed the young man hardly sees the strangers; he is only conscious of a deep feeling of relief that the solicitous eyes of his father and sister are withdrawn from him and Nancy.
Since this morning he has been in a strange state of alternating rapture and despair. He feels as if he and Nancy, having just found one another, are now doomed to part. Ever since he held her in his arms he has ached with loneliness and with thwarted longing; during the whole of this long day Nancy has eluded him; not for a single moment have they been alone together. And now all his good resolutions—the resolutions which stood him in such good stead in that dark, leafy tunnel—have vanished. He now faces the fact that they cannot hope, when once more alone and heart to heart, to be what Nancy calls "reasonable."…
Suddenly he comes back to the drab realities of every-day life. His father is introducing him to the visitors—first to the lady: "Mrs. Arbuthnot—my son, Gerald Burton. Mrs. Dampier—Mrs. Arbuthnot." And then to the two men, Mr. Arbuthnot and a Mr. Dallas.
There is a quick interchange of talk. The newcomers are explaining who and what they are. Mr. Robert Arbuthnot is a retired Anglo-Indian official, and he and his wife have now lived for two years in the dower house which forms part of the Barwell Moat estate.
"I should not have called quite so soon had it not been that our friend, Mr. Dallas, is only staying with us for two or three days, and he is most anxious to meet you, Mr. Senator. Mr. Dallas is one of the Officers of Health for the Port of London. He read some years ago"—she turns smilingly to the gentleman in question—"a very interesting pamphlet with which you seem to have been in some way concerned, about the Port of New York."
The Senator is flattered to find how well Mr. Dallas remembers that old report of which he was one of the signatories. For a moment he forgets his troubles; and the younger people—Mrs. Arbuthnot also—remain silent while these three men, who have each had a considerable experience of great affairs, begin talking of the problems which face those who have vast masses of human beings to consider and legislate for.
Mr. Dallas talks the most; he is one of those cheerful, eager Englishmen who like the sound of their own voices: he is also one of those fortunate people who take an intense interest in the work they are set to do. In Mr. Dallas's ears there is no pleasanter sounding word than the word "sanitation."
"Ah," he says, turning smilingly to the Senator, "how I envy my New York colleagues! They have plenary powers. They are real autocrats!"
"They would be but for our press," answers the Senator. "I wonder if you heard anything of the scrape Dr. Cranebrook got into last year?"
"Of course I did! I heard all about it, and I felt very sorry for him. But our London press is getting almost as bad! Government by newspaper—" he shakes his head expressively. "And my friend Arbuthnot tells me that it's becoming really serious in India; there the native press is getting more and more power. Ah well! They do those things better in France."