“I’ve got a good deal to say to you, girl.  It is well you came to-day—­you might otherwise have been too late.  I’m planning a long journey.”

Lynda started.

“A—­long journey?” she said.  Through the past years, since the dread disease had attacked Truedale, his travelling had been confined to passing to and from bedchamber and library in the wheelchair.

“You—­you think I jest?” There was a grim humour in the burning eyes.

“I do not know.”

“Well, then, I’ll tell you.  I am quite serious.  While I have been exiled from your attentions—­chained to this rock” (he struck the arms of the chair like a passionate child), “I have reached a conclusion I have always contemplated, more or less.  Now that I have recognized that the time will undoubtedly come when you, Con—­the lot of you—­will clear out, I have decided to prove to you all that I am not quite the dependant you think me.”

“Why—­what can you mean, Uncle William?”

This was a new phase and Lynda bent across the dog at her knee and put her hand on the arm of the chair.  She was frightened, aroused.  Truedale saw this and laughed a dry, mirthless laugh.

“Oh! a chair that can roll the length of this house can roll the distance I desire to go.  Money can pay for anything—­anything!  Thank God, I have money, plenty of it.  It means power—­even to such a thing as I am.  Power, Lynda, power!  It can snarl and unsnarl lives; it can buy favour and cause terror.  Think what I would have been without it all these years.  Think!  Why, I have bargained with it; crushed with it; threatened and beckoned with it—­now I am going to play with it!  I’m going to surprise every one and have a gala time myself.  I’m going to set things spinning and then I’m going on a journey.  It’s queer” (the sneering voice fell to a murmur), “all my prison-years I’ve thought of this and planned it; the doing of it seems quite the simplest part.  I wonder now why I have kept behind the bars when, by a little exertion—­a little indifference to opinion—­I might have broadened my horizon.  But good Lord!  I haven’t wasted time.  I’ve studied every detail; nothing has escaped me.  This” (he touched his head—­a fine, almost noble head, covered by a wealth of white hair), “this has been doing double duty while these” (he pointed to his useless legs) “have refused to play their part.  While I felt conscientiously responsible, I stuck to my job; but a man has a right to a little freedom of his own!”

Lynda drew so close that her stool touched the chair.  She bent her cheek upon the shrivelled hand resting upon the arm.  The excitement and feverish banter of Truedale affected her painfully.  She reproached herself bitterly for having left him to the mercy of his loneliness and imagination.  Her interest in, her resentment for, Conning faded before the pitiful display of feeling expressed in every tone and word of Truedale.

The touch of the warm cheek against his hand stirred the man.  His eyes softened, his face twitched and, because the young eyes were hidden, he permitted his gaze to rest reverently upon the bowed head.  She was the only thing on earth he loved—­the only thing that cut through his crust of hardness and despair and made him human.  Then, from out the unexpected, he asked: