She looked at Dora critically. Perhaps they had all misjudged her. Her heart seemed to be set upon her object with absolute determination; and if she loved Farquharson enough, nothing else mattered. Love was what he needed—love near at hand, love wrapping him round. The love which "feels no burthen, gives all for all and is all in all, which watches and, sleeping, slumbers not, when weary is not tired."
"You love Mr. Farquharson—you want me to understand that you really love him?" she said at last. "Love is such a big thing, Dora, I often wonder if girls understand it. Modern men and women take more trouble to choose a housekeeper than they give to the choice of a life-long companion. Marriage is all give and take—and there's more in those words than you will ever realize until you've gone right through the marriage service, and come out at the other side. It's a thing of deadly gravity, marriage, not a mere shifting of responsibility, or the prospect of a better position, or the escape from home discomfort. You are one of the lucky people to whom none of these three incentives need appeal. Oh, Dora, there are so many unhappy marriages in this world, and I'm so tired of them! Do make up your mind that yours shall be a beautiful success, not just a brilliant one."
"You always take things so seriously," Dora said tartly. "Of course I love him. Why should I want to marry him rather than any one else? It's not as if he were the only one. I'm only asking you to chaperon me for this one evening, not a lifetime, and it's nothing to make such a fuss about, after all. I never get an opportunity of saying a word to him without everybody seeing. Even servants may be reporters in disguise. It makes even me unlike myself; and I know it's only the fear of being seen and watched that keeps him from speaking to me. When he was not so important he used to talk to me quite a lot, and quite intimately. I remember one night at the Wereminsters' when he spoke of you—implied he liked you, but said you weren't his style, or something of the sort. For such a man that meant a lot. I'm not a woman to make confidences, as you know, so I appreciate reserve in others. I've come to you because you've seen everything from the first. You're married, you've got all you want; why can't you help me by giving me one or two of the opportunities nobody else in the whole world knows that I long for?"
This sounded plausible enough. Dora's ways were not as Evelyn's, but that was perhaps a mere matter of temperament. And the glow of sacrifice burns with so white a flame that it illuminates even those trivial objects that it falls upon.
"I'll come," said Evelyn, sighing. "What time shall I be ready?"
"We ought to be there at half-past nine," said Dora. "Will you be with us at nine-fifteen? Then we can have a talk first. By the way, you'd better take a cab, Evelyn, after all—you do live such an awfully long way out."
"Thanks. Then you don't think me an interfering old woman?" said Lady Wereminster.
"I think you are very kind," said Farquharson courteously. His tone was final. He rose and held out his hand, and Lady Wereminster, who was known amongst her circle of intimate friends as "The Social Tyrant," meekly acquiesced and left him.
"The man's extraordinarily reassuring," she told herself as she drove away. "He says very little. But he's a man of his word, and he'll do as I want. There's nothing he wouldn't do for Evelyn. I didn't dare even say I was sorry for him. And these are matters that the world would tell you you might not even pray about!" ...
Farquharson, left mercifully alone, went back to the table in his study and sat down heavily. Blue Books, pamphlets, the records of his work lay all about him, in orderly piles; Farquharson was nothing if not scrupulously neat; his life lay there. Methodical, orderly, brilliant, complete—which adjective best described it?