“Queer how I share your hatred of that person,” she murmured.

“Was he trying to make love to you this afternoon?” Wingate asked bluntly.

“He was just too clever,” she replied, “to put it into plain words.  His instinct told him what the result would be, so he decided to wait a little longer, although just towards the end he nearly gave himself away.  As a matter of fact,” she went on, “he was rather tediously melodramatic.  My husband, it seems, is in disgrace with the company—­has overdrawn, or helped himself to money, or something of the sort.  I rather fancy that I am cast for the role of self-sacrificing wife, who saves her husband from prison by little acts of kindness to his wronged partner.  Somehow or other, I don’t think the role suits me.  I am a very hard-hearted woman, I suppose, but I don’t believe I should lift up my little finger to save Henry from prison.  Besides, I hate the British and Imperial Granaries.”

“Why?” he asked.

“I hate the principle of gambling in commodities that are necessary for the poor,” she answered.  “I don’t pretend to be a philanthropist, or charitable, or anything of that sort.  I am wrapped up in my own life and its unhappiness.  At the same time, I would never receive as a friend any one who indulged in that sort of speculation.”

He looked at her thoughtfully, for once without that absorbing personal interest which had sprung up like a flame in his life.  He felt that underneath her words lay real earnestness, real purpose.

“Tell me,” he asked, a little abruptly, “if I started a crusade against the British and Imperial, outside the Stock Exchange altogether, if I embarked in a crude and illegal scheme to break them up, would you help me?”

“To the fullest extent of my power,” she answered eagerly.  “Tell me about it at once, please?”

“Not for a few days,” he replied.  “I have to think out many details, to get my tools together, and then to decide whether I should have a reasonable chance of success.”

“Promise me that I shall help?” she insisted.

“I promise that you shall have the opportunity.”

She rose from her chair and settled down in a corner of the settee.  With a little half-conscious gesture she invited him to take the place by her side.

“Do you know,” she said, “that you are making life much more endurable for me?”

“You should never believe it unendurable,” he told her firmly.  “Whatever one has suffered, and however dreary the present, there is always the future.”

“I wonder,” she murmured.  “In this life or the next?”

“In this one,” he answered.

“Are you, by the by, a believer in anything beyond?” she went on.

“A struggling one,” he replied.  “I have wanted so much to believe that I think I have at times almost succeeded.”