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She caught a glance from Burton and turned at once to her fiancé. "Am I to be taken for a ride this evening?" she asked. "A little later on, by all means, my dear Edith," Mr. Bomford declared. "A little later on, certainly. Your father has kindly invited me to stay and dine. It will give me very much pleasure. Perhaps we could go for a short distance in say three-quarters of an hour's time?"
"If you leave us alone together," she answered softly, "I'll never speak to you again." She sprang lightly to her feet. "Come," she declared, "it is chilly out here to-night. We are all going back into the drawing-room. I am going to make you listen while I sing." Mr. Bomford looked dissatisfied. He was flushed with wine and he spoke a little thickly. "If I could have five minutes " he began.
"We are only poor human beings, and in our days we have to eat and drink and love." "If only Mr. Bomford " he began She laid her fingers warningly upon his arm. Mr. Bomford was coming across the lawn towards them. "If you go off alone with him," Burton whispered, "I'll get back the beans and swamp the enterprise. I swear it."
"There is not the slightest necessity for you to believe it in fact, so far as I am concerned, it does not matter in the least whether you do or not." "Mr. Burton," the professor interposed, "I beg that you will not misunderstand Mr. Bomford. His is not a militant disbelief, it is simply a case of suspended judgment.
He was no sooner alone on the great unlit Common with its vast sense of spaciousness, its cool silence, its splendid dome of starlit sky, than all his anger and disappointment seemed to pass away. The white, threatening faces of the professor and Mr. Bomford no longer haunted him. Even the memory of Edith herself tugged no longer at his heartstrings.
Edith shook her head. "I am much too cold," she objected. "Besides, I want to hear Mr. Bunsome talk about the new discovery. Have you found a title for the food yet?" She walked rapidly on with Burton. Mr. Bomford followed them. "We have decided," he said, "to call it Menatogen." Burton gave a little start of surprise as he entered Mr. Waddington's office.
I should have dismissed the whole thing at once as incredible and preposterous. Even now, I must admit that I find it almost impossible to accept the story in its entirety." Burton looked him coldly in the eyes. Mr. Bomford did not please him. "The story is perfectly true," he said.
It was still she who was the presiding genius of that sentimental garden. "You are very kind," he murmured. "We shall expect you," Mr. Bomford declared, "at a quarter past eight this evening." To Burton, who was in those days an epicure in sensations, there was something almost ecstatic in the pleasure of that evening.
Bomford, who, during the absence of the professor in Assyria, represented the financial interests of the company. "A most wonderful report, gentlemen," the auditor pronounced, "a business, I should consider, without its equal in the world." "And still developing," Mr. Waddington remarked, impressively. "And still developing," the auditor agreed.
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