but Len ignored it. He heard Loraine declaring with a
charmingly assumed innocence, "Chance brings us into quite a little
party. First I happen on Mr. Burton, then on you two."

Suddenly an idea of escape struck Paul, as it had struck him at the
school. He, too, laughed, turning to Loraine. "And since you are in
better hands, I'll run along. I have an appointment at a studio on the
square."

Len Haswell favored him with a satirical glance. "You seem," he
suggested coolly, "to be only beginning your meal. We are here on
business, and won't interrupt." The big man turned on his heel, and,
followed by his companion, went into the adjoining dining-room. Loraine
Haswell laughed nervously, but Paul's face clouded with deep anxiety.

After he had put Loraine into a taxi' the cloud deepened. The same
self-accusations that had tortured his childhood with the suffering of
self-contempt after each act of cowardice had him again by the throat.
Never had it been his plan to urge this woman toward divorce. He had
simply drifted with pleasant tides and now he found himself washed
seaward with a dragging anchor. It was small compensation to reflect
that his fault was less vicious than craven.

The square was bathed in a radiance of frosty sunlight, and the
buildings at the south stood diamond-clear under a flawless sky. The
monument to the man whose courage and decision had cradled a nation's
birth gleamed in its granite whiteness. But Paul Burton felt small,
afraid and besmirched of soul. He hurried to his own house and shut
himself in with a thousand weak misgivings, until finally an idea
formulated itself. He would go to Hamilton for counsel and strength.

* * * * *

As far as the clean sweep of mountain winds differ from the suffocation
of a miasma, so far did the thoughts of Mary Burton differ from those of
Paul that afternoon.

She and Jefferson Edwardes had been riding in the park, and though their
horses had only cantered their hearts had ridden madly and on winged
steeds. Now, with twilight stealing in and softly blotting out the
angles of the room, they sat together, still in saddle-togs, before the
great, carven mantel which Hamilton had brought back from a European
castle where once Napoleon passed a night. A brave glare from roaring
logs of driftwood cheerily flooded with light the hearth and the huge
polar bear skin stretched before it. Mary Burton sat in a big chair,
also castle-rav