y instructions, sir, are to say to you that the ladies are not at
home."

But Akers held out his hat and gloves with so ugly a look that Grayson
took them.

"I have come to see my wife," he said. "Tell her that, and that if she
doesn't see me here I'll go upstairs and find her."

When Grayson still hesitated he made a move toward the staircase, and
the elderly servant, astounded at the speech and the movement, put down
the hat and faced him.

"I do not recognize any one in the household by that name, sir."

"You don't, don't you? Very well. Tell Miss Cardew I am here, and that
either she will come down or I'll go up. I'll wait in the library."

He watched Grayson start up the stairs, and then went into the library.
He was very carefully dressed, and momentarily exultant over the success
of his ruse, but he was uneasy, too, and wary, and inclined to regard
the house as a possible trap. He had made a gambler's venture, risking
everything on the cards he held, and without much confidence in them.
His vanity declined to believe that his old power over Lily was gone,
but he had held a purely physical dominance over so many women that he
knew both his strength and his limitations.

What he could not understand, what had kept him awake so many nights
since he had seen her, was her recoil from him on Willy Cameron's
announcement. She had known he had led the life of his sort; he
had never played the plaster saint to her. And she had accepted her
knowledge of his connection with the Red movement, on his mere promise
to reform. But this other, this accident, and she had turned from him
with a horror that made him furious to remember. These silly star-eyed
virgins, who accepted careful abstractions and then turned sick at life
itself, a man was a fool to put himself in their hands.

Mademoiselle was with Lily in her boudoir when Grayson came up, a thin,
tired-faced, suddenly old Mademoiselle, much given those days to early
masses, during which she prayed for eternal life for the man who had
ruined Lily's life, and that soon. To Mademoiselle marriage was a final
thing and divorce a wickedness against God and His establishment on
earth.

Lily, rather like Willy Cameron, was finding on her spirit at that time
a burden similar to his, of keeping up the morale of the household.

Grayson came in and closed the door behind him. Anger and anxiety were
in his worn old face, and Lily got up quickly. "What is it, Grayson?"

"I'm