“There is a storm coming,” she said.  “I have felt it for days.”

She stood looking out, pale, her large eyes strained as though seeking to read something which eluded her in the clouds or the shadows which hung over the city.  She had rather the air of a frightened but eager child.  She rested her fingers upon his arm, not exactly affectionately, but as though she felt the need of some protection.

“Do you know,” she whispered, “the feeling of this storm has been in my heart for days.  I am afraid—­afraid for all of us!”

“Afraid of what?” he asked gently.

“Afraid,” she went on, “because it seems to me that I can hear, at times like this, when one is alone, the sound of what one of your writers called footsteps amongst the hills, footsteps falling upon wool, muffled yet somehow ominous.  There is trouble coming.  I know it.  I am sure of it.”

“In this country they do not think so,” he reminded her.  “Most of our great statesmen of today have come to the conclusion that there will be no more war.”

“You have no great statesmen,” she answered simply.  “You have plenty of men who would make very fine local administrators, but you have no statesmen, or you would have provided for what is coming.”

There was a curious conviction in her words, a sense of one speaking who has seen the truth.

“Tell me,” he asked, “is there anything that you know of—­”

“Ah! but that I may not tell you,” she interrupted, turning away from the window.  “Of myself just now I say nothing—­only of you.  I am here for a day or two.  It is through me that you have suffered this humiliation.  I wanted to know just how far it went.  Is there anything I can do?”

“What could any one do?” he asked.  “I am the victim of circumstances.”

“But for a whole year!” she exclaimed.  “You are not like so many young Englishmen.  You do not wish to spend your time playing polo and golf, and shooting.  You must do something.  What are you going to do with that year?”

He moved across the room and took a cigarette from a box.

“Give me something to drink, please,” she begged.

He opened a cupboard in his sideboard and gave her some soda-water.  She had still the air of waiting for his reply.

“What am I going to do?” he repeated.  “Well, here I am with an idle twelve months.  It makes no difference to anybody what time I get up, what time I go to bed, with whom or how I spend the day.  I suppose to some people it would sound like Paradise.  To me it is hateful.  Shall I be your secretary?”

“How do you know that I need a secretary?” she asked.

“How should I?” he replied.  “Yet you are not altogether an idler in life, are you?”

For a moment she did not answer.  The silence in the room was almost impressive.  He looked at her over the top of the soda-water syphon whose handle he was manipulating.