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."
"I believe," she said reflectively, "but I cannot analyse my belief.
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