come up the
stairs at any moment. Langham himself might be of these.

Something of all this passed through North's mind as he stood there
hesitating. Then he unlocked the door, and standing aside, motioned her
to precede him into the room.

This room, the largest of several, he occupied, was his parlor. On
entering it he closed the door after him, and drew forward a chair for
Evelyn, but he did not himself sit down, nor did he remove his overcoat.

He had known Evelyn all his life, they had played together as children;
more than this, though now he would have been quite willing to forget
the whole episode and even more than willing that she should forget it,
there had been a time when he had moped in wretched melancholy because
of what he had then considered her utter fickleness. Shortly after this
he had been sent East to college and had borne the separation with a
fortitude that had rather surprised him when he recalled how bitter a
thing her heartlessness had seemed.

When they met again he had found her more alluring than ever, but more
devoted to her pleasures also; and then Marshall Langham had come into
her life. North had divined that the course of their love-making was far
from smooth, for Langham's temper was high and his will arbitrary, nor
was he one to bear meekly the crosses she laid on him, crosses which
other men had borne in smiling uncomplaint, reasoning no doubt, that it
was unwise to take her favors too seriously; that as they were easily
achieved they were quite as easily forfeited. But Langham was not like
the other men with whom she had amused herself. He was not only older
and more brilliant, but was giving every indication that his
professional success would be solid and substantial. Evelyn's father had
championed his cause, and in the end she had married him.

In the five years that had elapsed since then, her romance had taken its
place with the accepted things of life, and she revenged herself on
Langham, for what she had come to consider his unreasonable exactions,
by her recklessness, by her thirst for pleasure, and above all by her
extravagance.

Through all the vicissitudes of her married life, the smallest part of
which he only guessed, North had seen much of Evelyn. There was a daring
dangerous recklessness in her mood that he had sensed and understood and
to which he had made quick response. He knew that she was none too happy
with Langham, and although he had been conscious of n