"Anything you like, my dear Harry, if they'll keep me warm. I shall be a pillar of ice if I stand here." "Like Lot's wife! Was it ice, by the way? Well, good-night, then; or shall I post the letter?" "That's splendid of you. I'll just finish it. But I'll have to shut the window." "Imagine me a sentry doing the goose step. Will you be long?" "Just two minutes, really." He kissed his hand to her when she shut the window and began to stamp about to warm himself. They had been lovers since children, and were still free. Harry Lassett's three hundred a year "in the funds" just permitted him to play cricket for the county and to spend the best part of the winter at St. Moritz. He had not thought much about marriage. Gabrielle's two minutes "really" proved to be an exact prophecy. Haste bade her throw both preface and conclusion to the winds. She just wrote: "DEAR MR. FABER, "My father would be very pleased if you would become one of the Vice-Presidents of the International Arbitration League. Will you let me say 'yes' for you?" And that was the letter Harry carried to the post for her. Vanity promised her an answer. It would come over the telegraph wires, she thought. CHAPTER II A MAN OF DESTINY John Sebastian Faber had a suite of five rooms at the Savoy Hotel, and, as he said, he lived in four of them most of the time. The room which he did not occupy was devoted to three secretaries. Gabrielle found him at his desk in an apartment which should have been a drawing-room. The windows looked out upon the Shot Tower and showed him the majesty of Westminster. There was a litter of American journals upon a round table at his back and copies of the English _Times_, much mutilated by cutting. He wore a black morning coat, and would have been called well-dressed by an American tailor. His was the "clean-limbed" type of man who is such an excellent product of the sister nation--moderately tall, suggesting virility and immense nervous energy. Someone upon the ship said that he "snatched at life," and that was no untrue description of him. But he had also picked up a little sum of eleven millions sterling by the process, and that kind of snatching bears imitation. A footman brought Gabrielle to the room, and Faber sprang up immediately, brushing back curly brown hair from his forehead. It was evident that he expected a somewhat protracted interview, for he wheeled a low chair near to his own before he held out his hand to her. "Why, now, I'm glad to see you. Sit down right here and let us talk. A long way in from Hampstead, isn't it? Too hot, perhaps; well, then, we'll have the steam turned off." "Oh, please!" she said, casting loose her grey furs--he had already regarded her from a man's first aspect and approved the picture--"I have been walking down the Strand and the air is so cold. It's delicious in here--and what roses!"