IV
1
He did not know why he had consented to receive her, unless it was
because he knew that they would meet inevitably sooner or later. He
felt very able to meet her--cool, and hard and clear-thinking. It was
early yet. A wintry sunlight rested on his neatly ordered table, and
he could smile at the idea that in a few hours he would begin to be
afraid again.
She had made no appointment. Urged by some caprice or other she had
driven up to his door and sent up her card with the pencilled
inscription "_Me voici_!" Standing at his window he could just see the
long graceful lines of her Rolls-Royce, painted an amazing blue--pale
blue was notoriously her colour--and the pale-blue clad figure of her
chauffeur. It occurred to him that she had chosen the uniform simply
to make the man ridiculous--to show that there were no limits to her
audacity and power. She was, he thought, stronger than the men who
thought they were ruling the destinies of nations. For she could ride
rough-shod over convention and prejudice and human dignity. She was
perhaps the last representative of an autocratic egotism in a world in
which the individual will had almost ceased to exist. She seemed to
him the survival of an eternal evil.
And yet when he saw her he laughed. She was so magnificently
impossible. It seemed that she had put on every jewel that she could
carry. She was painted more profusely than usual, and her dress was
one of those fantastic creations with which producers endeavour to
bluff through a peculiarly idiotic revue.
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