m with a faint foolish
curiosity to note whether it, too, had changed. Madame Beattie thrust
out a pretty foot, and Esther, perched on the piano stool, looked
rigidly down at her trembling hands. She was very pale. Suddenly she
recovered herself, and turned to Madame Beattie.

"He had just come," she said. "He came in. I didn't ask him to. He had
not--" a little note like fright or triumph beat into her voice--"he had
not--kissed me."

She turned to him as if for a confirmation he could not in honesty
refuse her, and Madame Beattie burst into a laugh, one of perfect
acceptance of things as they are, human frailties among the first.

"Esther," she said, "you're a little fool. If you want a divorce what do
you give yourself away for? Your counsel wouldn't let you."

The whole implication was astounding to Jeff; but the only thing he
could fix definitely was the concrete possibility that she had counsel.

"Who is your counsel, Esther?" he asked her.

But Esther had gone farther than discretion bade.

"I am not obliged to say," she answered, with a stubbornness equal to
his own, whatever that might prove. "I am not obliged to say anything.
But I do think I have a right to ask you to tell Aunt Patricia that I
have not taken you back, in any sense whatever. Not--not condoned."

She slipped on the word and he guessed that it had been used to her and
that although she considered it of some value, she had not technically
taken it in.

"What had you to condone in me, Esther?" he asked her gently. Suddenly
she seemed to him most pathetic in her wilful folly. She had always
been, she would always be, he knew, a creature who ruled through her
weakness, found it an asset, traded on it perhaps, and whereas once this
had seemed to him enchanting, now, in the face of ill-fortune it looked
pitifully inadequate and base.

"I was afraid of you," she insisted. "I am now."

"Well!" said Jeff. He found himself smiling at Madame Beattie, and she
was answering his smile. Perhaps it was rather the conventional tribute
on his part, to conceal that he might easily have thrown himself back in
his chair behind the shelter of his hands, or gone down in any upheaval
of primal emotions; and perhaps he saw in her answer, if not sympathy,
for she was too impersonal for that, a candid understanding of the
little scene and an appreciation of its dramatic quality. "Then," said
he, after his monosyllable, "there is nothing left me but to go." Whe