t sole custody?"

Ralph made a sign of assent, and Moffatt pondered. "That's bad--bad."

"And now I understand she's going to marry again--and of course I can't
give up my son."

"She wants you to, eh?"

Ralph again assented.

Moffatt swung his chair about and leaned back in it, stretching out his
plump legs and contemplating the tips of his varnished boots. He hummed
a low tune behind inscrutable lips.

"That's what you want the money for?" he finally raised his head to ask.

The word came out of the depths of Ralph's anguish: "Yes."

"And why you want it in such a hurry. I see." Moffatt reverted to the
study of his boots. "It's a lot of money."

"Yes. That's the difficulty. And I...she..."

Ralph's tongue was again too thick for his mouth. "I'm afraid she won't
wait...or take less..."

Moffatt, abandoning the boots, was scrutinizing him through half-shut
lids. "No," he said slowly, "I don't believe Undine Spragg'll take a
single cent less."

Ralph felt himself whiten. Was it insolence or ignorance that had
prompted Moffatt's speech? Nothing in his voice or face showed the
sense of any shades of expression or of feeling: he seemed to apply
to everything the measure of the same crude flippancy. But such
considerations could not curb Ralph now. He said to himself "Keep your
temper--keep your temper--" and his anger suddenly boiled over.

"Look here, Moffatt," he said, getting to his feet, "the fact that I've
been divorced from Mrs. Marvell doesn't authorize any one to take that
tone to me in speaking of her."

Moffatt met the challenge with a calm stare under which there were
dawning signs of surprise and interest. "That so? Well, if that's the
case I presume I ought to feel the same way: I've been divorced from her
myself."

For an instant the words conveyed no meaning to Ralph; then they surged
up into his brain and flung him forward with half-raised arm. But he
felt the grotesqueness of the gesture and his arm dropped back to his
side. A series of unimportant and irrelevant things raced through his
mind; then obscurity settled down on it. "THIS man...THIS man..." was
the one fiery point in his darkened consciousness.... "What on earth
are you talking about?" he brought out.

"Why, facts," said Moffatt, in a cool half-humorous voice. "You didn't
know? I understood from Mrs. Marvell your folks had a prejudice against
divorce, so I suppose she kept quiet about that early episode. The truth
is," he co