unsteady to him. Electra was one of the fixed ideas of his
life; her nobility, her reserve, her strength had seemed to set her far
above him. Now she sounded like the devil's advocate. She was gazing at
him keenly.

"Her story made a great impression on you," she threw out incidentally.

The effort was apparent, but Peter accepted it.

"Yes," he answered simply. "She makes a great impression on everybody.
She will on you."

"What evidence have you brought me? Did you see them married?"

"No," said Peter, with the same unmoved courtesy.

"You see! Have you even found any record of their marriage?"

"No."

"You have the girl's word. She has come over here with you. What for?"

Peter lifted a hand to his forehead. He answered gently as a man
sometimes does, of set purpose, to avoid falling into a passion.

"It was the natural thing, Electra. She has no home, poor child!--nor
money, except what Tom left in his purse. He'd been losing pretty
heavily just before. I say, it seemed the natural thing to come to you.
Half this place was his. His wife belongs here." The last argument
sounded to him unpardonably crude, as to an imperial lady, but he
ventured it. Then he looked at her. With his artist's premonition, he
looked to see her brows drawn, her teeth perhaps set angrily upon a
quivering lip. But Electra was again pale. Her face was marble to him,
to everything.

"I shall fight it," she said inexorably, "to the last penny."

He gazed at her now as if she were a stranger. It was incredible that
this was the woman whose hand he had kissed but the moment before. He
ventured one more defense.

"Electra, you have not seen her."

"I shall not see her. Where is she--in New York?"

"Here."

"Here!"

"At grandmother's. I left her there. I thought when we had had our
little talk you would come over with me and see her, and invite her
home."

"Invite her here?"

"I thought so."

"Peter," said Electra, with a quiet certainty, "you must be out of your
mind."

There they stood in the arbor, their lovers' arbor, gazing at each other
like strangers. Peter recovered first, not to an understanding of the
situation, but to the need of breaking its tension.

"I fancied," he said, "you would be eager to know her."

"Is she a grisette?"

His mind ached under the strain of taking her in. He felt dumbly her
contrast to the facile, sympathetic natures he had been thrown with in
his life abroad. When he had left her,