He came over to her.  “If I had gone to South Africa would you have remembered my name for a month?” he asked with determination and meaning.

“My friends never suffer lunar eclipse,” she answered, gaily.  “Dear sir, I am called Hold-Fast.  My friends are century-flowers and are always blooming.”

“You count me among your friends?”

“I hope so.  You will let me make all England envious of me, won’t you?  I never did you any harm, and I do want to have a hero in my tiny circle.”

“A hero—­you mean me?  Well, I begin to think I have some courage when I ask you to let me inside your ‘tiny’ circle.  I suppose most people would think it audacity, not courage.”

“You seem not to be aware what an important person you are—­how almost sensationally important.  Why, I am only a pebble on a shore like yours, a little unknown slip of a girl who babbles, and babbles in vain.”

She got to her feet now.  “Oh, but believe me, believe me,” she said, with sweet and sudden earnestness, “I am prouder than I can say that you will let me be a friend of yours!  I like men who have done things, who do things.  My grandfather did big, world-wide things, and—­”

“Yes, I know; I met your grandfather once.  He was a big man, big as can be.  He had the world by the ear always.”

“He spoiled me for the commonplace,” she replied.  “If I had lived in Pizarro’s time, I’d have gone to Peru with him, the splendid robber.”

He answered with the eager frankness and humour of a boy.  “If you mean to be a friend of mine, there are those who will think that in one way you have fulfilled your ambition, for they say I’ve spoiled the Peruvians, too.”

“I like you when you say things like that,” she murmured.  “If you said them often—­”

She looked at him archly, and her eyes brimmed with amusement and excitement.

Suddenly he caught both her hands in his and his eyes burned.  “Will you—­”

He paused.  His courage forsook him.  Boldness had its limit.  He feared a repulse which could never be overcome.  “Will you, and all of you here, come down to my place in Wales next week?” he blundered out.

She was glad he had faltered.  It was too bewildering.  She dared not yet face the question she had seen he was about to ask.  Power—­yes, he could give her that; but power was the craving of an ambitious soul.  There were other things.  There was the desire of the heart, the longing which came with music and the whispering trees and the bright stars, the girlish dreams of ardent love and the garlands of youth and joy—­and Ian Stafford.

Suddenly she drew herself together.  She was conscious that the servant was entering the room with a letter.

“The messenger is waiting,” the servant said.

With an apology she opened the note slowly as Byng turned to the fire.  She read the page with a strange, tense look, closing her eyes at last with a slight sense of dizziness.  Then she said to the servant: