"Well, Laura," he said presently, "your sister has told me everything. She
has seen your husband--it's all arranged--and you're to stay here till it's
over ... You want to stay here, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Then it's settled," he went on. "There's only one thing--the other man. I
don't know who he is and I don't want to know. And I don't want you to know
him again. You're not to see him. Understand?" For a moment Laura was
silent.

"I'm going to marry him, father," she said. And standing in the darkened
room Roger stiffened sharply.

"Well," he answered, after a pause, "that's your affair. You're no longer a
child. I wish you were," he added.

Suddenly in the darkness Laura's hand came out clutching for his. But he
had already turned to the door.

"Good-night," he said, and left her.

In the hallway below he met Deborah, and to her questioning look he
replied, "All right, I guess. Now I'm going to bed." He went into his room
and closed the door.

As soon as Roger was alone, he knew this was the hardest part--to be here
by himself in this intimate room, with this worn blue rug, these pictures
and this old mahogany bed. For he had promised Judith his wife to keep
close to the children. What would she think of him if she knew?

Judith had been a broad-minded woman, sensible, big-hearted. But she never
would have stood for this. Once, he recollected, she had helped a girl
friend to divorce her husband, a drunkard who ran after chorus girls. But
that had been quite different. There the wife had been innocent and had
done it for her children. Laura was guilty, she hadn't a child, she was
already planning to marry again. And then what, he asked himself. "From bad
to worse, very likely. A woman can't stop when she's started downhill." His
eye was caught by the picture directly before him on the wall--the one his
wife had given him--two herdsmen with their cattle high up on a shoulder of
a sweeping mountain side, tiny blue figures against the dawn. It had been
like a symbol of their lives, always beginning clean glorious days. What
was Laura beginning?

"Well," he demanded angrily, as he began to jerk off his clothes, "what can
I do about it? Try to keep her from re-marrying, eh? And suppose I
succeeded, how long would it last? She wouldn't stay here and I couldn't
keep her. She'll be independent now--her looks will be her bank account.
There'd be some other chap in no time, and he might not even marry her!" He
tugg