"Where is my father?" she asked him, when they met and Peter had pulled off his hat and salaamed before her. "Gone down to the plantation to see Osmond." She took fright. "To see Osmond! How does my father know anything about him? How does he dare--" "Osmond sent for him," said Peter, turning to walk with her. He was tossing up his stick and catching it, in love of the day. "It's the first human being Osmond has expressed an interest in. But I don't wonder. Everybody wants to see the chief." "Why should he have sent?" she repeated to herself. "I'll tell you something," continued Peter. "The chief will tell you when you see him. He has been summoned." "My father?" "Yes. He is needed." "Where?" "He won't tell me. But it's urgent. It means canceling his engagements here. Of course there's but one supposition." "Russia?" He nodded. "I wish I could go with him," he said impetuously. She looked at him, and his face was glowing. She had seen that look so many times on other faces, that wistful longing for the unnamed beautiful. It was what Markham MacLeod was always calling out in faces. They might be young, they might be the faces of those who had suffered long experience, but always it was those who were hungry, either with the hunger of youth or the delay of hope, the cruelty of time. He seemed to be the great necromancer, the great promiser. Could such promises come to naught? "To leave here?" she suggested. "To leave--" she hesitated. "I shouldn't leave Electra," said Peter simply. "When I met you, I was going to ask her to go with me." She stopped and held out her hand to him. "Go," she said. "Go to her and ask her. I wish you luck, Peter--dear Peter!" He did not look altogether a happy lover, as he stood holding her hand. He gazed at her, she thought, sadly, as if he dreamed of things that could not be. What was it in youth that made everything into twilight, even with the drum and fife calling to wars and victories? She was impatient with it, with deceiving life itself that promised and then lied. She took her hand away. "Good-by, Peter," she said, sadly now in her turn, because it occurred to her that after Peter should have seen Electra, he would never again be her own good comrade. He would know. She left him standing there looking after her, and then, when he found she would not loiter, he went on his way. But Peter did not toss his stick up now. He walked slowly, and thought of what he meant to do. They seemed to be walking with him, one on each side, Rose and Electra. It was chiefly the thought of Electra, as it had moulded him from year to year while he had been absent from her; but it was the delicate presence of the other woman, so wonderful by nature and so equipped with all the arts of life that the pleasure of her was almost pain. They seemed to keep a hand upon him, one through his fealty to her and the other by compelling and many-sided beauty. XX