ered by his hands,

"Berkley!"

The young man's hands fell; he faced the other, who had risen to
his heavy six-foot height, confronting him across the table.

"Berkley, whatever claim you have on me--and I'm ignoring the
chance that you have none----"

"By God, I tell you I have none! I want none! What you have done
to her you have done to me! What you and your conscience and your
cruelty and your attorneys did to her twenty-four years ago, you
have done this day to me! As surely as you outlawed her, so have
you outlawed me to-day. That is what I now am, an outlaw!"

"It was insulted civilisation that punished, not I, Berkley----"

"It was you! You took your shrinking pound of flesh. I know your
sort. Hell is full of them singing psalms!"

Colonel Arran sat silently stern a moment. Then the congested
muscles, habituated to control, relaxed again. He said, under
perfect self-command:

"You'd better know the truth. It is too late now to discuss whose
fault it was that the trouble arose between your mother and me. We
lived together only a few weeks. She was in love with her cousin;
she didn't realise it until she'd married me. I have nothing more
to say on that score; she tried to be faithful, I believe she was;
but he was a scoundrel. And she ended by thinking me one.

"Even before I married her I was made painfully aware that our
dispositions and temperaments were not entirely compatible. I
think," he added grimly, "that in the letters read to you this
afternoon she used the expression, 'ice and fire,' in referring to
herself and me."

Berkley only looked at him.

"There is now nothing to be gained in reviewing that unhappy
affair," continued the other. "Your mother's family are headlong,
impulsive, fiery, unstable, emotional. There was a last shameful
and degrading scene. I offered her a separation; but she was
unwisely persuaded to sue for divorce."

Colonel Arran bent his head and touched his long gray moustache
with bony fingers.

"The proceeding was farcical; the decree a fraud. I warned her;
but she snapped her fingers at me and married her cousin the next
day. . . . And then I did my duty by civilisation."

Still Berkley never stirred. The older man looked down at the
wine-soiled cloth, traced the outline of the crimson stain with
unsteady finger. Then, lifting his head:

"I had that infamous decree set aside," he said grimly. "It was a
matter of duty and of conscience,