m.

"Come in. . . . Oh, John, you needn't have knocked."

He came in slowly and quietly, a gentle smile on his lips. The gray
granite look had softened into his natural coloring.

"I must say you're a very handsome pair," he said. "Don't go just yet,
Archie. If we three are to talk things over in the future, we had
better have a little tentative practice. Are we three the only ones
who know of this sensational development?"

"And Schuyler," I said.

"Is he for you or against you?"

"We thought we could be just great friends and see each other once in a
while. He was for that. But, of course, that was only romantic
nonsense."

"Yes, that was nonsense," said Fulton. "It would have made my position
altogether too ridiculous. Did it occur to you to be great friends,
and not see each other?"

"John," exclaimed Lucy, "you don't understand."

"I don't understand the importance which lovers attach to love? Well,
perhaps not. Drunkards hate to cure themselves of drink; smokers of
smoke; lovers of love. Yet all these appetites can be cured, often to
the immense benefit of the sufferers and of everybody concerned. And
so you thought you could lead two lives at once, Lucy?"

"I did think so."

"Gathering strength in romantic byways to see you through the prosy
thoroughfares? It wouldn't have worked."

"We know that now."

"You couldn't have lied about every meeting with Archie--lied as to
where you were going and where you had been. Truth comes natural to
you, even if you seem to have fallen down on some of the other virtues."

I _knew_ that he was laboring under a great strain. And yet for the
life of me I could not read any symptoms of that laboring in his face
or voice. His voice was easy, casual, and tinged with humor. It was
almost as if he was relieved to find two such inconsequential persons
as Lucy and myself at the bottom of his troubles. Now and then his
left eyebrow arched high on his forehead, and there would be a sharp
sudden glance in the corresponding eye.

"I wonder," he said, turning to me, "if people in your situation ever
look at it from the critical outsider's point of view. Have you
considered that a passion for something forbidden is not a natural, not
a respectable passion? According to all moral and social laws Lucy is
a forbidden object for your love and vice versa. People are not going
to think well of you two."

"Oh, we know _that_," said Lucy, wearily.

"My de