you as you lay asleep."

"Was my mouth open?"

"A little."

"Am I yellow?"

"Very."

"Eyes red? Hair in strings? Lips blue?"

"All that," he said, "and skin somewhat mottled. But I was not so much
interested in your beauty as I was in trying to determine whether you
were well enough to stand two shocks."

"I need them," replied Gladys.

"One is rather unpleasant, the other--the reverse, in fact a happiness."

"The unpleasant first, please."

"Certainly," he replied. "Always the medicine first, then the candy."
And he leaned back and closed his eyes and seemed to be settling
himself for indefinite silence.

"Go on," she said impatiently. "What's the medicine? A death?"

"I said unpleasant, didn't I? When an enemy dies it's all joy. When a
friend passes over to eternal bliss, why, being good Christians, we are
not so faithless and selfish as to let the momentary separation
distress us."

"But what is it? You're trying to gain time by all this beating about
the bush. You ought to know me well enough to know you can speak
straight out."

"Fanshaw's suing his wife for divorce--and he names Jack."

"Is that your news?" said Gladys, languidly. Suddenly she flung aside
the robes and sat up.

"What's Pauline going to do? Can she--" Gladys paused.

"Yes, she can--if she wishes to."

"But--will she? Will she?" demanded Gladys.

"Jack doesn't know what she'll do," replied Langdon. "He's keeping
quiet--the only sane course when that kind of storm breaks. He had
hoped you'd be there to smooth her down, but he says when he opened the
subject of your going back to Saint X you cut him off."

"Does she know?"

"Somebody must have told her the day you left. Don't you remember, she
was taken ill suddenly?"

"Oh!" Gladys vividly recalled Pauline's strange look and manner. She
could see her sister-in-law--the long, lithe form, the small, graceful
head, with its thick, soft, waving hair, the oval face, the skin as
fine as the petals at the heart of a rose, the arched brows and
golden-brown eyes; that look, that air, as of buoyant life locked in
the spell of an icy trance, mysterious, fascinating, sometimes so
melancholy.

"I almost hope she'll do it, Mowbray," she said. "Jack doesn't deserve
her. He's not a bit her sort. She ought to have married--"

"Some one who had her sort of ideals--some one like that big, handsome
chap--the one you admired so frantically--Governor Scarborough. He wa