“I suppose it’s all right,” said Marcelle.
“You belovedest mid-Victorian survival!” he laughed. “I do believe the young woman’s proposal shocked you!”
They both would have been, if not shocked, at least brought to a sense of actual things, had they seen the transports to which the lovers surrendered themselves as soon as the door of the den closed behind them. Many hundreds of millions of youthful pairs have done exactly the same after long separation. She threw herself into his arms, in which he enfolded her. They kissed and sighed. They had thought they would never be alone again. He had been thirsting for her lips all the tantalizing evening. That wonderful brain of hers—to suggest this visit to his room. Even if the idea had occurred to his dull masculine mind, he wouldn’t have had the daring to tender the invitation. Her ever new adorableness! And more kisses and raptures, until, side by side in the corner of the couch, they began to talk of rational matters.
“There are great things brewing,” she said, after a while. “Just a whisper has reached me—enough to make it dangerous.”
“What things do you refer to?” he asked, with a quick knitting of the brow.
She told him of a wild distortion of the plans of the High Command current in political dining-rooms.
“It’s damnable!” he cried angrily. “One tiny grain of fact to a mountain of imagination. For God’s sake, make it your business to go about crabbing the lie for all you’re worth!”
“I will. When you really know, you can speak with such moral authority that you’re believed, although you don’t give away a bit of your knowledge. At least, anyone with a little experience can do it.”
“And you’re an adept,” he said admiringly.
She drew him nearer, for he had started away on his proclamation of the damnability of rumours.