"Three A. M."
The old man nodded.
"I've not met her yet, boy," he said kindly, "though," he added slyly, "I seem as if I did know her. You see, you've spoken of her a lot. Well, if she's half the woman you have told me she is, I congratulate you heartily. Somehow, boy, I feel sure she is. Yes, it is as well to go—with possibilities hanging over us all."
He rose from the table and held out his hand as Ruxton followed his example.
"The very best of luck, boy, and—will you give her my love? You can leave the work here in my hands."
The two men clasped hands with a vigor such as belonged to two strong natures, and then, as they moved off to the library, they fell to discussing those "possibilities" to which Ruxton had alluded.
Ruxton's anxiety was no mere impatience of a hotheaded lover. He had not permitted his imagination to distort things out of a real proportion. He knew that their Teutonic enemies were able to lay hands upon Vita if they decided upon such a course. And all too late he had realized that his message had been an indiscretion. Once having arrived at this realization, the rest followed in painful sequence. If his message, though carefully worded, had fallen into enemy hands, the possibilities such an event opened up were illimitable.
It was between ten and eleven in the morning that he presented himself at the flat in Kensington.
On his way up the stairs he received his first shock. It was no less than an encounter with Mrs. Jenkins on her way down them, garbed in her long outdoor ulster, such as all women of her class seem to possess, bearing under one arm an ominous-looking bundle.
He stopped her, or rather she provoked attention herself by a dry cough and a prolonged, moist sniff.