curiosity, he drew from his pocket the little revolver
which Honeybrook had slipped into it. Power looked at it and shrugged his
shoulders.

"We'll leave that out, then, for the moment," he said. "Now listen to me.
I'm off on another tack now. Eight years ago I met Elizabeth Dalstan. I
was thirty-eight years old then--I am forty-six now. You young men
nowadays go through your life, they tell me, with a woman on your hands
most of the time, waste yourself out in a score of passions, go through
the same old rigmarole once a year or something like it. I was married
when I was twenty-four. I got married to lay my hands on the first ten
thousand dollars I needed. My wife left me fifteen years ago. You may
have read of her. She was a storekeeper's daughter then. She has a flat
in Paris now, a country house in England, a villa at Monte Carlo and
another at Florence. She lives her life, I live mine. She's the only
woman I'd ever spoken a civil word to until I met Elizabeth Dalstan,
or since."

Philip was interested despite his violent antipathy to the man.

"A singular record of fidelity," he remarked suavely.

"If you'd drop that play-acting talk and speak like a man, I'd like you
better," Sylvanus Power continued. "There it is in plain words. I lived
with my wife until we quarrelled and she left me, and while she lived
with me I thought no more of women than cats. When she went, I thought
I'd done with the sex. Elizabeth Dalstan happened along, and I found I
hadn't even begun. Eight years ago we met. I offered her at once
everything I could offer. Nothing doing. We don't need to tell one
another that she isn't that sort. I went off and left her, spent a
winter in Siberia, and came home by China. I suppose there were women
there and in Paris. I was there for a month. I didn't see them. Then
America. Elizabeth Dalstan was still touring, not doing much good for
herself. I hung around for a time, tried my luck once more--no go. Then I
went back to Europe, offered my wife ten million and an income for a
divorce. It didn't suit her, so I came back again. The third time I found
Elizabeth discouraged. If ever a man found a woman at the right time, I
did. She is ambitious--Lord knows why! I hate acting and the theatres and
everything to do with them. However, I tried a new move. I built that
theatre in New York--there isn't another place like it in the world--and
offered it to her for a birthday present. Then she began to hesitate.