"It will be a slow business. I advise you to stand by yet awhile. If we get the cargoes slowly, as we shall have to do, the price of wheat will still stand high, and that's no good to these people at all. Take my advice and go on with what you are doing. The country owes you something, sure, and it is just beginning to find that out. Did you see your pictures in the halfpenny illustrateds, this morning? I like those fine; I've got 'em here somewhere, and I mean to keep 'em."
Trevelle thought it wise to move away at this point, and they were left together in the great bare hall of the Temple, whither the people would soon be flocking for bread. A winter sun shone cold and clear through the wide window above them; then voices echoed strangely beneath the vault as though they were tricked by a mutual self-restraint to an artificiality of tone foreign to them. This man had come to love this woman passionately, and he was about to go to his own country, never to return.
"Oh!" she cried, surprised and delighted when she beheld the pictures, "what a dreadful guy they have made me! Now, don't you think this sort of thing ought to be stopped?" He shook his head as though she had disappointed him.
"I never knew a woman yet whose picture was in a newspaper who didn't say they had guyed her. The thing seems well enough to me, and I must keep it for a better. Say, now, you know, I'm going away the first mail that sails. Will you give me a better portrait or must I take this one?"
Her spirit fell though she did not dare to tell him why. He was going, and the building her hope had raised must come crashing down. With this was her feeling that in some way he had failed her in the critical hours. There were men who cried out upon his astuteness, made manifest in the hour of crisis, but she had never heeded them.
"If you really think that you will remember my name when you are in New York again----" Her hesitation was the complement of the obvious, and he smiled again.
"It will be a new name. Let's hear how it sounds. Mrs. Harry Lassett! Well, I don't like the sound of it overmuch, but I suppose it's not my say. The wedding, I think, is for next month, is it not?"
"For the week before Lent. You will not build me a Temple now; it would be a mockery!"