day it seemed to him that his deadness of emotion
was such that he could carry the thing through mechanically, as a
skilled surgeon uses a knife. If he found her at tea in the drawing-room
he might tell her then.

He found her at tea, but there were people with her. He was almost
sorry; and yet it keyed him up to see that there was some necessity "to
still play the gentleman." He played it, and played it well--with much
of his old-time ease. The feat was so extraordinary as to call out a
round of mental applause for himself; and, after all, he reflected,
there would be time enough in the evening.

But tea being over, Miss Guion announced that Mr. and Mrs. Temple and
Drusilla Fane were coming informally to dinner, bringing with them a
guest of theirs, "some one of the name of Davenant." For an instant he
felt that he must ask her to telephone and put them off, but on second
thoughts it seemed better to let them come. It would be in the nature of
a reprieve, not so much for himself as for Olivia. It would give her one
more cheerful evening, the last, perhaps, in her life. Besides--the
suggestion was a vague one, sprung doubtless of the hysterical element
in his suppressed excitement--he might test his avowals on Temple and
Davenant, getting a foretaste of what it would be to face the world. He
formed no precise intention of doing that; he only allowed his mind to
linger on the luxury of trying it. He had suspected lately that Rodney
Temple knew more of his situation than he had ever told him, so that the
way to speak out would be cleared in advance; and as for the man of the
name of Davenant--probably Tom Davenant's adopted son, who was said to
have pulled off some good things a few years ago--there would be, in
humbling himself before one so successful, a morbid joy of the kind the
devotee may get in being crushed by an idol.

In this he was not mistaken. While they were there he was able to draw
from his own speeches, covert or open, the relief that comes to a man in
pain from moaning. Now that they were gone, however, the last extraneous
incident that could possibly stand between him and the beginning of the
end had passed. The moment he had foreseen, as one foresees death, was
on him; so, raising his head from the woodwork of the doorway, he braced
himself, and said, "Now!"

At almost the same instant he heard the rustle of his daughter's skirts
as she came from the drawing-room on her way up-stairs. She advanced