, a decision to which she is partly committed. In the
meantime, during these last few months, Elizabeth and I have become great
friends. You know that I care for her. I think that she cares for me. She
has to make up her mind. Martha, which is she to choose?"

"How do you want me to answer that?" the girl asked, slackening her pace
a little. "I'm not Miss Dalstan."

"From her point of view," he explained eagerly. "This man Power is madly
and I believe truly in love with her. In his way he is great; in his way,
too, he is a potentate. He can give her more than luxury, more, even,
than success. You know Elizabeth," he went on. "She is one of the finest
women who ever breathed, an idealist but a seeker after big things. She
deserves the big things. Is she more likely to find them with me or with
him?"

"Power's wife is still alive," she ruminated.

"And won't accept a divorce at present," he observed. "If ever she does,
of course he will marry her. That has to be taken into account not
morally but the temporal side of it. We know perfectly well that whatever
Elizabeth decides, she couldn't possibly do wrong."

Martha smiled a little grimly.

"That's what it is to be born in the clouds," she said. "There is no sin
for a good woman."

He looked at her appreciatively.

"I wonder how I knew that you would understand this," he sighed.

Suddenly he clutched at her arm. She glanced up in surprise. He was
staring at a passer-by. Her eyes followed his. In a neat morning suit,
with a black bowler hat and well-polished shoes, a cigar in his mouth and
a general air of prosperity, Mr. Edward Dane was strolling along
Broadway. He passed without a glance at either of them. For a moment
Philip faltered. Then he set his teeth and walked on. There was an ashen
shade in his face. The girl looked at him and shook her head.

"Mr. Ware," she said, "we haven't talked much about it, but there is
something there behind, isn't there, something you are terrified about,
something that might come, even now?"

"She knows about it," he interposed quickly.

"Would it be very bad if it came?"

"Hideous!"

"If she were your wife--?"

"She would be notorious. It would ruin her."

"Do you think, then," she asked quietly, "that you needed to come and ask
my advice?"

He walked on with his head high, looking upwards with unseeing eyes. A
little vista of that undisturbed supper table on the other side of the
marble hall, a dim perspective