“Will you serve me and fight for me against all my enemies?” she asked.

“So long as I live,” he answered.

She glanced round.  There was no sign of the returning waiter.  She bent over him and kissed him.

“Don’t come with me,” she said.  “There’s a cab stand in the Avenue.  I shall walk to Sevres and take the train.”

She did not look back.

CHAPTER XII

She reached home in the evening.  The Phillips’s old rooms had been twice let since Christmas, but were now again empty.  The McKean with his silent ways and his everlasting pipe had gone to America to superintend the production of one of his plays.  The house gave her the feeling of being haunted.  She had her dinner brought up to her and prepared for a long evening’s work; but found herself unable to think—­except on the one subject that she wanted to put off thinking about.  To her relief the last post brought her a letter from Arthur.  He had been called to Lisbon to look after a contract, and would be away for a fortnight.  Her father was not as well as he had been.

It seemed to just fit in.  She would run down and spend a few quiet days at Liverpool.  In her old familiar room where the moon peeped in over the tops of the tall pines she would be able to reason things out.  Perhaps her father would be able to help her.  She had lost her childish conception of him as of someone prim and proper, with cut and dried formulas for all occasions.  That glimpse he had shown her of himself had established a fellowship between them.  He, too, had wrestled with life’s riddles, not sure of his own answers.  She found him suffering from his old heart trouble, but more cheerful than she had known him for years.  Arthur seemed to be doing wonders with the men.  They were coming to trust him.

“The difficulty I have always been up against,” explained her father, “has been their suspicion.  ’What’s the cunning old rascal up to now?  What’s his little game?’ That is always what I have felt they were thinking to themselves whenever I have wanted to do anything for them.  It isn’t anything he says to them.  It seems to be just he, himself.”

He sketched out their plans to her.  It seemed to be all going in at one ear and out at the other.  What was the matter with her?  Perhaps she was tired without knowing it.  She would get him to tell her all about it to-morrow.  Also, to-morrow, she would tell him about Phillips, and ask his advice.  It was really quite late.  If he talked any more now, it would give her a headache.  She felt it coming on.

She made her “good-night” extra affectionate, hoping to disguise her impatience.  She wanted to get up to her own room.