n stoutly, but
it was almost beyond her woman's strength to resist. She feinted for
time by haphazard questioning, voiced in broken, uncertain tones while
she strove to maintain her purpose:

"What are you going to do, Charles? How will you prove that I am dearer
to you, after all, than is this hateful business?"

"How am I going to prove it?" Hamilton repeated, with immense
self-satisfaction. "Why, I'm going to sell out to Morton, to-morrow."

At this explicit statement of his purpose, Cicily was swiftly recalled
from her temporary mood of yielding.

"You're going to quit?" she demanded, sharply. "Is that what you mean,
Charles?"

"Yes," came the complacent answer, firm in the intensity of sudden
resolve. "I have it all planned out, already. We'll take a steamer the
last of the week for another--a better, wiser--honeymoon. We'll go to
the Italian lakes, to Switzerland. Then, afterward, we'll drop down to
that little village in the south of France. You remember the place,
don't you, dearest?"

"Yes," Cicily answered, very softly. Her cheeks were flushed with tender
memories of that embowered nook which had given lotos-eating pause to
their wedding-journey. Her eyes were dreamy with fond reminiscence, as
she imagined again the quaint beauties of that lover's paradise. But, by
a fierce effort of will, she threw off the spell that threatened to
defeat her most cherished ambition; and she spoke with an accent of
supreme determination, in a voice become suddenly vibrant with new
energy. "But I won't go!" Her face, too, had lost the delicate, yielding
lines of the woman wooed and won, rejoicing in submission; it was again
alert, set to fixedness of plan that would brook no denial. At sight of
the change in her, Hamilton stared in dismay. He could not understand
this development in her. He had humiliated himself in vain. He had
offered the abandonment of all that could offend her, yet she remained
obdurate, discontented, defiant of his every desire. He almost groaned,
as he cast himself disconsolately into a chair, and buried his head in
his hands, despairing of any understanding as to the whims of a woman.

"Don't you see, dear," Cicily went on, gently persuasive, "that we
can't--we just can't!--quit? Why, Charles, being a quitter is the one
thing that you've most hated all your life. And I, too, have hated it.
No, you can't quit, because you're held here by duty--by duty to
yourself, by duty to those men and women, o