Margaret stopped in her promenade and looked out over the city; it seemed to float in a golden mirage, all commonplaceness, all familiarity lost in the radiance of the western sky, against which, here and there, a cross-crowned spire thrust its slender, tapering height, or a campanile rose, dark and sharply pictured, above shining roofs. Far off the bells were ringing, sweetly and insistently, an evening chime.
“She is using Wicklow to attain her ends,” Margaret said, a little mocking smile on her pale face; “he is dull and infatuated. I am told she’s in Russian employ and there is information, plenty of it, in his reach. You mark my words, she’ll ruin him—he’ll never be a candidate.”
Fox frowned. “Pardon me,” he said abruptly; “I cannot listen.”
She tossed her cigarette over the terrace and watched it descend, a mere spark in the dusk below, where evening lay in purple shadows. “Forgive me,” she returned lightly, “I forgot—men are such conscientious creatures and I—I’m an unscrupulous wretch, but I’m not cruel, William!”
“Nor I!” he replied, with a slight change of color, “but, Margaret, can’t you see how impossible—”
She laughed bitterly. “I’m very dull,” she remarked.
A shuddering recognition of some new, terrible barrier between them tore her heart. She held out her hand. “Good-by,” she said in a low voice, “I’m going to ask you to dine again—will you come?” her feverishly glowing eyes fixed themselves on his face.
Fox colored again, conscious that he must seem an ill-mannered brute. “Of course I’ll come,” he assented, vexed at himself and touched by the sudden sweetness of her manner.
But her smile was wan; she felt as if the universe moved beneath her feet; as yet the moment was delayed when her wounded heart would refuse to submit, and her whole passionate, sensuous nature rise up to battle for life and love.