"Apparently he wasn't--but he is now. He desires you--I give you the verb as Spellman, the secretary, passed it on to me--he desires you to be in the breakfast loggia here at three this afternoon." I could barely squeak the words out: "Does he mean that he's coming to see me?" "That, it seems, isn't necessary for you to know. Your business is to be there. There's quite a subtle point in the limitation. Being there, you'll see what will happen next. It isn't good for you to be told too much at a time." My spirit began to revive. "I'm not his servant. I'm Mrs. Rossiter's. If he wants anything of me why doesn't he say so through her?" "'Sh, 'sh, Miss Adare! You mustn't dictate to God, or say he should act in this way or in that." "But he's not God." "Oh, as to that--well, you'll see." He added, with his light laugh, "What will you bet that I don't know what it's all about?" "Oh, I bet you do." "Then," he warned, "you're up against it." I was getting on my mettle. "Perhaps I am--but I sha'n't be alone." "No; but you'll be made to feel alone." "Even so--" As I was anxious to keep from boasting beforehand, I left the sentence there. "Yes?" he jogged. "Even so--what?" "Oh, nothing. I only mean that I'm not afraid of him--that is," I corrected, "I'm not afraid of him fundamentally." He laughed again. "Not afraid of him fundamentally! That's fine!" Something in his glance seemed to approve of me. "No, I don't believe you are; but I wonder a little why not." I reflected, gazing beyond his shoulder, down the velvety slopes of the lawn, and across the dancing blue sea to the islets that were mere specks on the horizon. In the end I decided to speak soberly. "I'm not afraid of him," I said at last, "because I've got a sure thing." "You mean him?" I knew the reference was to Hugh Brokenshire. "If I mean him," I replied, after a minute's thinking, "it's only as the greater includes the less, or as the universal includes everything." He whistled under his breath. "Does that mean anything? Or is it just big talk?" Half shy and half ashamed of going on with what I had to say, I was obliged to smile ruefully. "It's big talk because it's a big principle. I don't know how to manage it with anything small." I tried to explain further, knowing that my dark skin flushed to a kind of dahlia-red while I was doing so. "I don't know whether I've read it--or whether I heard it--or whether I've just evolved it--but I seem to have got hold of--of--don't laugh too hard, please--of the secret of success." "Good for you! I hope you're not going to be stingy with it." "No; I'll tell you--partly because I want to talk about it to some one, and just at present there's no one else." "Thanks!" "The secret of success, as I reason it out, must be something that will protect a weak person against a strong one--me, for instance, against J. Howard Brokenshire--and work everything out all right. There," I cried, "I've said the word."