this house," he declared. "I tell you that its atmosphere would choke
the life out of every thought that was ever conceived. You may blind
others, even yourself, young man," he went on, "but I know. You are a
renegade. You would serve two mistresses. I am going."

"You shall not," Saton declared. "This is absurd. Come," he added,
trying to draw his arm through his visitor's, "we will go into another
room if this one annoys you."

Naudheim stepped back. He thrust Saton away contemptuously. He was the
taller of the two by some inches, and his eyes flashed with scorn as
he turned toward the door.

"I leave this house at once," he said. "I was a fool to come, but I am
not such a fool as you, Bertrand Saton. Don't write or come near me
again until your sham house and your sham life are in ruins, and you
yourself in the wilderness. I may take you to my heart again then. I
cannot tell. But to-day I loathe you. You are a creature of no
account--a foolish, dazzled moth. Don't dare to ring your bells. I
need no flunkeys to show me the way to the door."

Naudheim strode out, as a prophet of sterner days might have cast the
dust of a pagan dancing hall from his feet. Saton for a moment was
staggered. His composure left him. He walked aimlessly up and down the
room, swinging his gloves in his hand, and muttering to himself.

Then Rachael came in. She walked with the help of two sticks. She
seemed gaunter and thinner than ever, yet her eyes had lost little of
their fire, although they seemed set deeper in the caverns of her
face.

"Naudheim has gone," she said. "What is wrong, Bertrand?"

"Naudheim is impossible," Saton answered. "He came in here to work
this morning, looked around the room, and began to storm. He objected
to the flowers, to the writing-table, to me. He has shaken the dust of
us off his feet, and gone back to his wretched cabin in Switzerland."

She leaned on her sticks and looked at him.

"On the face of the earth," she said, "there does not breathe a fool
like you."

Saton's expression hardened.

"You, too!" he exclaimed. "Well, go on."

"Can't you understand," the woman exclaimed, her voice shaking, "that
we are on the verge of a precipice? Do you read the papers? There were
questions asked last night in the House about what they called these
fortune-telling establishments. Yet everything goes on without a
change--by your orders, I am told. Oh, you fool! Huntley knows that he
is being spied upon. In