ou are not
allowed to do that, you will take her and live with her."

He paused again. "Will you?"

"Yes," said Eugene.

Colfax twisted slowly in his chair and looked out of the window. What a
man! What a curious thing love was! "When is it," he asked finally,
"that you think you might do this?"

"Oh, I don't know. I'm all tangled up now. I'll have to think."

Colfax meditated.

"It's a peculiar business. Few people would understand this as well as I
do. Few people would understand you, Witla, as I do. You haven't
calculated right, old man, and you'll have to pay the price. We all do.
I can't let you stay here. I wish I could, but I can't. You'll have to
take a year off and think this thing out. If nothing happens--if no
scandal arises--well, I won't say what I'll do. I might make a berth for
you here somewhere--not exactly in the same position, perhaps, but
somewhere. I'll have to think about that. Meanwhile"--he stopped and
thought again.

Eugene was seeing clearly how it was with him. All this talk about
coming back meant nothing. The thing that was apparent in Colfax's mind
was that he would have to go, and the reason that he would have to go
was not Mrs. Dale or Suzanne, or the moral issue involved, but the fact
that he had lost Colfax's confidence in him. Somehow, through White,
through Mrs. Dale, through his own actions day in and day out, Colfax
had come to the conclusion that he was erratic, uncertain, and, for that
reason, nothing else, he was being dispensed with now. It was
Suzanne--it was fate, his own unfortunate temperament. He brooded
pathetically, and then he said: "When do you want this to happen?"

"Oh, any time, the quicker, the better, if a public scandal is to grow
out of it. If you want you can take your time, three weeks, a month, six
weeks. You had better make it a matter of health and resign for your own
good.--I mean the looks of the thing. That won't make any difference in
my subsequent conclusions. This place is arranged so well now, that it
can run nicely for a year without much trouble. We might fix this up
again--it depends----"

Eugene wished he had not added the last hypocritical phrase.

He shook hands and went to the door and Eugene strolled to the window.
Here was all the solid foundation knocked from under him at one fell
stroke, as if by a cannon. He had lost this truly magnificent position,
$25,000 a year. Where would he get another like it? Who else--what other
compa