aguely uncomfortable. Nevertheless, he answered her
without hesitation.

"Yes," he replied, "I could forget it. I will promise to forget it."

It was unaccountable, but he almost fancied that he saw this new thing
pass from her face, leaving her pale and tremulous. She looked away
again and busied herself with the tea-caddy, but the fingers which held
the spoon were shaking a little.

"Oh, I suppose I could forget," she said, "but it would be very
difficult for either of us to behave as though it had never happened.
Besides, it really was an impossible situation, you know," she went on,
looking down into the tea-caddy. "It is much better for me to be here
with Annie. You can come and see me now and then and we can still be
very good friends."

Tavernake was annoyed. He said nothing, and Beatrice, glancing up,
laughed at his gloomy expression.

"You certainly are," she declared, "the most impossible, the most
primitive person I ever met. London isn't Arcadia, you know, and you are
not my brother. Besides, you were such an autocrat. You didn't even like
my going out to supper with Mr. Grier."

"I hate the fellow!" Tavernake admitted. "Are you seeing much of him?"

"He took us all out to supper last night," she replied. "I thought it
was very kind of him to ask me."

"Kind, indeed! Does he want to marry you?" Tavernake demanded.

She set down the teapot and again she laughed softly. In her plain black
gown, very simple, adorned only by the little white bow at her neck,
quakerlike and spotless, with the added color in her cheeks, too, which
seemed to have come there during the last few moments, she was a very
alluring person.

"He can't," she declared. "He is married already."

Then there came to Tavernake an inspiration, an inspiration so wonderful
that he gripped the sides of his chair and sat up. Here, after all, was
the way out for him, the way out from his garden of madness, the way to
escape from that mysterious, paralyzing yoke whose burden was already
heavy upon his shoulders. In that swift, vivid moment he saw something
of the truth. He saw himself losing all his virility, the tool and
plaything of this woman who had bewitched him, a poor, fond creature
living only for the kind words and glances she might throw him at her
pleasure. In those few seconds he knew the true from the false.
Without hesitation, he gripped with all the colossal selfishness of his
unthinking sex at the rope which was thrown to