“I am about to be married. You've often told me I ought to be, and now I'm going to act on your advice.”
The bleak old face was smiling. “Then the rumour I see in the papers isn't true, after all?”
“Oh, yes, it's true enough, and my wife is to go with me.”
“But have you considered that carefully? Isn't it a terrible demand to make of any woman? Women are more religious than men, but they are more material also. Under the heat of religious impulse a woman is capable of sacrifices—great sacrifices—but when it has cooled——”
“No fear of that, uncle,” said John; and then he told the Prime Minister what he had told Mrs. Callender—that it was Glory's proposal that they should leave London, and that without this suggestion he might not have thought of his present enterprise. The bleak face kept smiling, but the Prime Minister was asking himself: “What does this mean? Has she her own reasons for wishing to go away?”
“Do you know, my boy, that with all this talk you've not yet told me who she is?”
John told him, and then a faint and far-off rumour out of another world seemed to flit across his memory.
“An actress at present, you say?”
“So to speak, but ready to give up everything for this glorious mission.”
“Very brave, no doubt, very beautiful; but what of your present responsibilities—your responsibilities in London?”