have called it silly if, instead of seeing it, she had been told of it by another. Through the window she saw no trees nor hills nor shapes of other houses: only the level floor of mist, as if this man and she were perched in a blue tower overlooking the world.
Pain came and went in his face: sudden jabs of sickening and burning pain. But as lightning goes through the darkness and the darkness closes up again and shows no trace, so the tranquillity of his countenance swallowed up each shock of torture. How could she have thought him young? Or old either? It came over her, with a sensation of quick fear, that this face was of no age at all. She had, or so she had believed, disliked bearded faces except for old men with white hair. But that was because she had long since forgotten the imagined Arthur of her childhood—and the imagined Solomon too. Solomon . . . for the first time in many years the bright solar blend of king and lover and magician which hangs about that name stole back upon her mind. For the first time in all those years she tasted the word King itself with all its linked associations of battle, marriage, priesthood, mercy, and power. At that moment, as her eyes first rested on his face, Jane forgot who she was, and where, and her faint grudge against Grace Ironwood, and her more obscure grudge against Mark, and her childhood and her father’s house. It was, of course, only for a flash. Next moment she was once more the ordinary social Jane, flushed and confused to find that she had been staring rudely (at least she hoped that rudeness would be the main impression produced) at a total stranger. But her world was unmade; she knew that. Anything might happen now.
“Thank you, Grace,” the man was saying. “Is this Mrs. Studdock?”
And the voice also seemed to be like sunlight and gold. Like gold not only as gold is beautiful but as it is heavy: like sunlight not only as it falls gently on English walls in autumn but as it beats down on the jungle or the desert to engender life or destroy it. And now it was addressing her.
“You must forgive me for not getting up, Mrs. Studdock,” it said. “My foot is hurt.”
And Jane heard her own voice saying “Yes, sir,” soft and chastened like Miss Ironwood’s voice. She had meant to say, “Good morning, Mr. Fisher-King,” in an easy tone that would have counteracted the absurdity of her behaviour on first entering the room. But the other was what actually came out of her mouth. Shortly after this she found herself seated before the Director. She was shaken: she was even shaking. She hoped intensely that she was not going to cry, or be unable to speak, or do anything silly. For her world was unmade: anything might happen now. If only the conversation were over so that she could get out of that room without disgrace, and go away, not for good, but for a long time.
“Do you wish me to remain, sir?” said Miss Ironwood.
“No, Grace,” said the Director, “I don’t think you need stay. Thank you.”
“And now,” thought Jane, “it’s coming—it’s coming—it’s coming now.” All the most intolerable questions he might ask, all the most extravagant things he might make her do, flashed through her mind in a fatuous medley. For all power of resistance seemed to have been drained away from her and she was left without protection.
II
For the first few minutes after Grace Ironwood had left them alone, Jane hardly took in what the Director was saying. It was not that her attention wandered: on the contrary, her attention was so fixed on him that it defeated itself. Every tone, every look (how could they have supposed she would think him young?), every gesture, was printing itself upon her memory: and it was not until she found that he had ceased speaking and was apparently awaiting an answer that she realised she had taken in so little of what he had been saying.
“I—I beg your pardon,” she said, wishing that she did not keep on turning red like a schoolgirl.
“I was saying,” he answered, “that you have already done us the greatest possible service. We knew that one of the most dangerous attacks ever made upon the human race was coming very soon and in this island. We had an idea that Belbury might be connected with it. But we were not certain. We certainly did not know that Belbury was so important. That is why your information is so valuable. But in another way, it presents us with a difficulty. I mean a difficulty as far as you are concerned. We had hoped you would be able to join us—to become one of our army.”
“Can I not, sir?” said Jane.
“It is difficult,” said the Director after a pause. “You see, your husband is in Belbury.”
Jane glanced up. It had been on the tip of her tongue to say “Do you mean that Mark is in any danger?” But she had realised that anxiety about Mark did not, in fact, make any part of the complex emotions she was feeling, and that to reply thus would be hypocrisy. It was a sort of scruple she had not often felt before. Finally she said, “What do you mean?”
“Why,” said the Director, “it would be hard for the same person to be the wife of an official in the N.I.C.E. and also a member of my company.”
“You mean you couldn’t trust me?”
“I mean nothing we need be afraid to speak of. I mean that, in the circumstances, you and I and your husband could not all be trusting one another.”
Jane bit her lip in anger, not at the Director but at Mark. Why should he and his affairs with the Feverstone man intrude themselves at such a moment as this?
“I must do what I think right, mustn’t I?” she said softly. “I mean—if Mark—if my husband—is on the wrong side, I can’t let that make any difference to what I do. Can I?”
“You are thinking about what is right?” said the Director. Jane started, and flushed. She had not, she realised, been thinking about that.
“Of course,” said the Director, “things might come to such a point that you would be justified in coming here, even wholly against his will, even secretly. It depends on how close the danger is—the danger to us all, and to you personally.”
“I thought the danger was right on top of us now . . . from the way Mrs. Denniston talked.”
“That is just the question,” said the Director, with a smile. “I am not allowed to be too prudent. I am not allowed to use desperate remedies until desperate diseases are really apparent. Otherwise we become just like our enemies—breaking all the rules whenever we imagine that it might possibly do some vague good to humanity in the remote future.”
“But will it do anyone any harm if I come here?” asked Jane.
He did not directly answer this. Presently he spoke again.
“It looks as if you will have to go back; at least for the present. You will, no doubt, be seeing your husband again fairly soon. I think you must make at least one effort to detach him from the N.I.C.E.”
“But how can I, sir?” said Jane. “What have I to say to him. He’d think it all nonsense. He wouldn’t believe all that about an attack on the human race.” As soon as she had said it she wondered, “Did that sound cunning?” then, more disconcertingly, “Was it cunning?”
“No,” said the Director. “And you must not tell him. You must not mention me nor the company at all. We have put our lives in your hands. You must simply ask him to leave Belbury. You must put it on your own wishes. You are his wife.”
“Mark never takes any
