seemed to Riatt about as terrible a prospect
as could be offered to a human being.

There was just one chance for him--that Christine might be willing to
release him. If she really loved Linburne, if there had been some sort of
understanding between them in the past, if his coming had only
precipitated a lovers' quarrel, then certainly Christine had too much
intelligence to let such a chance slip through her fingers just on the
eve of Linburne's divorce. Nor was she, he thought bitterly, too proud to
stoop to ask a man to reconsider; nor did it seem likely, however deeply
Linburne's vanity had been wounded, that he would refuse to listen.

With this in mind, as soon as he reached his hotel, he sat down and wrote
her a letter:

"My dear Christine:

"What was it, according to your idea, that happened this afternoon? I
believed that for the first time I asked you to marry me, and that you,
for the first time definitely accepted me. But as I think over your
manner, I am led to think you supposed it was just a continuation of
our old joke.

"Did you accept me, Christine? And if so, why? Why commit yourself to a
marriage without affection, at the psychological moment when a man for
whom you have always cared is about to be free?

"If you still need me in the game, I am ready enough to be of use, but
I will not be bound to a relation unless you, too, consider it
irrevocably binding.

"Yours,
M.R."

He told the messenger to wait for an answer, but he thought that
Christine would hardly be willing to commit herself on such short notice,
or without an interview with Linburne.

But, within a surprisingly short interval, her letter was in his
impatient hands.

"Dear Max:

"I will not be so cruel as to leave you one moment longer in the false
hope that your little break for freedom may be successful. Face the fact,
bravely, my dear. I am going to marry you. We are both irrevocably
bound--at least as irrevocably as the marriage tie can bind nowadays. If
this afternoon my manner seemed less portentous than you expected, that
must have been because I have always counted on just this termination to
our little adventure. You must do me the justice to confess that I have
always told you so. As for Lee, in spite of Nancy (I suppose it was Nancy
to whom you rushed for information from my very doorstep) I have never
cared sixpence for him.

"Yours till death us do part,

"CHRISTINE."

Max read the letter which was broug