daughter will have more accurate instincts and keener
intuitions. My own judgment I reserve entirely, and I advise you to do
the same.

"Go home and tell Vane everything. Don't spare yourself or him, for in a
case like this truth, the whole truth, is, after all, the greatest
mercy. I will tell my wife the whole story this afternoon, and she will
tell Enid when she gets back from Paris. Then I think the best that we
can do will be to leave them to find a solution of the problem between
them. Depend upon it that, whatever solution they do arrive at, it will
be more accurate and will stand the test of time better than any
arbitrary action which you or I might take."

And so ended the only false--utterly and hopelessly false--judgment
which Sir Godfrey Raleigh had ever delivered.

Sir Arthur took it as gospel, it all seemed so clear and so logical, so
fair to everybody; just the sort of judgment, in fact, which might have
been expected from a man of such vast and varied experience. Both of
them had the best of intentions, for were not the happiness, the
earthly fates of their two only children bound up in it?

Under such circumstances, though the advice might be mistaken, it was
absolutely impossible that it could be anything else but honest and
sincere. It was not for them to see into the future, nor yet to solve
those impossibly intricate problems of human passion, of human strength
and weakness, which, in defiance of all laws human and divine, break
through the traditions of ages, make a mockery of all commonplace laws,
and finally solve themselves with an accuracy as pitiless as it is
precise.

Sir Arthur left his friend's house with the firm conviction that the
only thing to be done under the circumstances was to follow his advice.
When he got back to his house in Warwick Gardens, the door was opened by
Koda Bux, and the first thing he said to him was:

"Is Mr. Vane awake?"

"Sahib, he is, and well. He is even as though he had never drunk of the
liquor of fire. He is in the library awaiting your return."

It was then getting on for one o'clock, the lunch-time of Sir Arthur's
household, and the table was already laid in what was called the
breakfast-room, that is to say a room looking out upon one of the long,
back gardens which are attached to the houses in Warwick Gardens.

Vane was sitting in the library waiting, something in shame and
something in fear, for his father's return. He more than half-expected