Last night I thought that I
could see a little way over the top. To-night you are different."
"If I am different," he answered quietly, "it is because, for the
first time for many years, I have found myself wondering whether
the life I had planned for myself, the things which I had planned
should make life for me, are the best. I have had doubts--perhaps
I might say regrets."
"I should like to go to South America," Lady Cynthia declared
softly.
He finished the cigarette which he was smoking and deliberately
threw away the stump. Then he turned and looked at her. His
face seemed harder than ever, clean-cut, the face of a man able
to defy Fate, but she saw something in his eyes which she had
never seen before.
"Dear child," he said, "if I could roll back the years, if from
all my deeds of sin, as the world knows sin, I could cancel one,
there is nothing in the world would make me happier than to ask
you to come with me as my cherished companion to just whatever
part of the world you cared for. But I have been playing pitch
and toss with fortune all my life, since the great trouble came
which changed me so much. Even at this moment, the coin is in
the air which may decide my fate."
"You mean?" she ventured.
"I mean," he continued, "that after the event of which we spoke
last night, nothing in life has been more than an incident, and I
have striven to find distraction by means which none of you--not
even you, Lady Cynthia, with all your breadth of outlook and all
your craving after new things--would justify.
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