t from the path of his love, he was being bound to a future marred
by intervals of clouded misgiving.

The thought of Mary also brought him distress. There was no policy of
ostrich-blind self-comfort by which he could escape from the realization
that he was indirectly a party in responsibility for the destructive
menace that hung over her happiness. His few attempts to discuss the
subject with Hamilton had not been hopeful or pleasant, and he could not
doubt that Edwardes would ultimately be swept into a chaos of ruin
because he had opposed the irresistible onrush of his brother's power.
He sought to persuade himself of Hamilton's infallible wisdom and Mary's
folly of infatuation, but the only certain conviction was that of a
bruised and heavy heart in his own breast. Paul was pitiably weak, but,
also, he was sensitively tender. Love he gave and commanded with the
uncalculating quality of a child.

To Marcia he had not confided any word of his status with Mrs. Haswell,
but her quick intuition told her he was deeply troubled--and her quicker
sympathy responded. Sometimes Paul longed to see Loraine, but after each
visit to the tiny apartment where Marcia Terroll and a girl who drew
fashion illustrations had set up their household gods, the vision of
his far-away Cleopatra grew a shade dimmer and a trifle more
impersonal.

Bit by bit he had pieced together a few sketchy fragments of Miss
Terroll's biography, just enough to make the wish for fuller knowledge
tantalizing. That was her maiden name, also used as a stage name, but
she had been married when just out of Wellesley. She spoke little of
that episode. Her girlhood was a pleasanter theme and its environment
had been that of his own world--full of the gaiety and sunshine that is
girlhood's inalienable right. All these scraps of personal history
filtered into their conversation; rather as incidentals than as direct
information. This young woman was not of the type that gratuitously
relates a life-story. That she had been left resourceless with a young
daughter and had fought the world unaided and unembittered, herself
retaining the seeming of a child, Paul now knew, but he knew all too
little to satisfy his interest. She had been secretary in a business
house and an interpreter of German and Spanish. Now she was the only
actress he knew--untypical and unemployed.

Paul felt that in the presence of her superior mind and larger education
he ought to be abashed, yet he