He glanced at Trevelle, and they smiled together. There had been great news from Queenstown that morning. Why should they withhold it from her?
"The fact is," said Trevelle, "the strike in America is over and the wheat ships are sailing. You read your evening paper to-night and see what it says. We have brains amongst us and they are busy. That's what we've been asking for all along, in peace or war, not the dreamers but the brains. And we've got 'em, Miss Silvester, we've got 'em!"
He snapped his fingers, an habitual gesture, and seemed thereby to imply that he, Rupert Trevelle, had laid down a doctrine which henceforth must be the salvation of the British people. Gabrielle, however, heard him a little coldly though she was full of wonder.
"I did not think you were so interested in this matter," she said. And then, "Will you, please, tell me why the men in Liverpool are striking still?" When the scientific exposition had left her more in doubt than ever, she asked of her work once more. "Then it is no good going on here if the wheat will come in," she said; "our task will be finished then, will it not, Mr. Faber?" He shook his head at that and told her of his fears.
"It will be a slow business. I advise you to stand by yet awhile. If we get the cargoes slowly, as we shall have to do, the price of wheat will still stand high, and that's no good to these people at all. Take my advice and go on with what you are doing. The country owes you something, sure, and it is just beginning to find that out. Did you see your pictures in the halfpenny illustrateds, this morning? I like those fine; I've got 'em here somewhere, and I mean to keep 'em."
Trevelle thought it wise to move away at this point, and they were left together in the great bare hall of the Temple, whither the people would soon be flocking for bread. A winter sun shone cold and clear through the wide window above them; then voices echoed strangely beneath the vault as though they were tricked by a mutual self-restraint to an artificiality of tone foreign to them. This man had come to love this woman passionately, and he was about to go to his own country, never to return.
"Oh!" she cried, surprised and delighted when she beheld the pictures, "what a dreadful guy they have made me! Now, don't you think this sort of thing ought to be stopped?" He shook his head as though she had disappointed him.
"I never knew a woman yet whose picture was in a newspaper who didn't say they had guyed her. The thing seems well enough to me, and I must keep it for a better. Say, now, you know, I'm going away the first mail that sails. Will you give me a better portrait or must I take this one?"
Her spirit fell though she did not dare to tell him why. He was going, and the building her hope had raised must come crashing down. With this was her feeling that in some way he had failed her in the critical hours. There were men who cried out upon his astuteness, made manifest in the hour of crisis, but she had never heeded them.
"If you really think that you will remember my name when you are in New York again——" Her hesitation was the complement of the obvious, and he smiled again.