Part 55 (1/2)

He smiled. He was struggling to lead back their conversation to a lighter level. A certain change in this woman's tone and manner, a change which was reflected even in her appearance, disturbed him painfully.

”The balance is already on my side, dear hostess,” he a.s.sured her. ”You have left me an eternal debtor to your s.e.x. I shall never again indulge in generalities or wholesale condemnation. It is, after all, foolish.

But tell me why you are sending Lady Anne to help me to-day?”

She watched for any trace of disappointment in his tone. There was none. On the contrary, his mention of Lady Anne was accompanied by a slight eagerness which puzzled her.

”I have a few social duties to attend to,” she explained a little vaguely. ”Lady Anne is quite efficient. I like her handwriting, too. It is like herself--clean-cut, legible. There are no hidden pools about Lady Anne.”

”Yet,” he said, ”a woman always keeps some part of herself concealed.”

”You think that Lady Anne, too, has her secret?” Madame Christophor asked, raising her eyes.

”I think that if she has, she is quite capable of keeping it,” he replied.

There was a knock at the door. Lady Anne entered. She came a few yards into the room with a slight smile upon her lips, and nodded pleasantly to Julien. In her slim stateliness, the untroubled serenity of youth reflected in her smiling face, she represented perfectly the other type of womanhood. Madame Christophor rose deliberately to her feet. For one swift moment she measured the things between them. She herself was conscious of a greater intellectual maturity, a more subtle quality in her looks, a beauty less describable, more exotic, perhaps, but also more provocative. The arts of her s.e.x were at her finger-tips, the small arts disdained by this well-looking and perfectly healthy young woman. She turned her head quickly towards Sir Julien. It was the idle impulse of the man or woman who plucks the petals from a flower. Julien was gazing steadfastly at Lady Anne.... Madame Christophor picked up her belongings and moved towards the door.

”Be merciless today, my friend!” she exclaimed, pausing upon the threshold,--”virulent, if you will! _Le Jour_ was screaming at you last night. Jesen has lost his head a little; or is it the lash of his master which he feels? How can one tell?”

”After tonight,” Julien remarked, with a smile, ”who will read _Le Jour_? I shall tell the story of the purchase of that paper by Herr Freudenberg. French people will not love to think that the pen of Jesen has been guided by the hand of Germany.”

Madame Christophor made a little grimace.

”My friend,” she declared, ”my house is, I believe, the safest spot in Paris, yet there are limits. Remember that you have become a celebrity.

There is an agitation in England to have you back at the Foreign Office. All Paris is divided upon the subject of your life or death.

And there are men here in the city who seek for you night and day with death in their hands. My house is sanctuary, but no one can write such things as you are writing and deem himself secure against any risk.”

He smiled at her confidently.

”Yet you would not have me leave out one single line, you would not have me lower the torch for one second! You suggest caution!--you, who haven't the word 'fear' in your vocabulary! It is your house, not mine.

There are more bombs to be bought in Paris. Yet tell me, would you have me spare a single word of the truth?”

She flashed back her answer across the room. For the moment she forgot Lady Anne. They two were on another plane.

”Not one word,” she a.s.sured him, with soft yet vibrant earnestness. ”I would have you write the truth in letters of fire upon the clouds, for all Paris to see. You have a message. See that it goes out.”

Madame Christophor closed the door softly behind her. Julien remained looking at the spot from which she had disappeared. Then he drew a little breath.

”She is wonderful!” he muttered.

Lady Anne took up her pen. She avoided looking at him.

”Let us begin,” she said....

They wrote for hours. Julien was in the mood for this final and fierce attack upon _Le Jour_ and all the powers that stood behind it. He held up Falkenberg to derision--the charlatan of modern politics, the Puck of Berlin, whose one sincerity was his hatred for England, and one capacity, the giant capacity for mischief! He wound up his article with a scathing and personal denunciation of Falkenberg, and a splendidly worded appeal to the French nation not for one moment to be deceived as to the character of this tireless and ambitious schemer after his country's welfare. All the time Anne took down his words in fluent and flowing writing. When at last he had finished, he looked at the sheets which surrounded her with something like amazement.

”Why, what a pig I've been, Anne!” he exclaimed, glancing from the table to the clock. ”You must have been writing for nearly three hours!”

She was busy picking up the sheets.