ence?
None! With what reason? Little indeed of that. That they were
standing with swords drawn when she had left the room and that when
she returned the swords were sleeping in their scabbards and they
were kissing to make friends--how much was there to be reasoned from
that? Were not such incidents common to the relationship between
brother and sister? Yet, beyond all that, Sally saw with a clearness
of vision that penetrated every obvious deduction; saw away into the
stretch of Time when his sister would have won him back to her side
where she could have no place, no existence.

It might have been wrong, quite easily could have been false a
thousand times, but it was knowledge to her, sure, fateful,
undeniable knowledge; and from that day her instinct was keyed to
find its proof. The cancerous disease of jealousy had dropped its
first seed in the blood of her, and the vulturous growth began to
spread its lean, clutching fingers about her heart.

"My sister's not hitting it off with her husband," Traill told her,
that afternoon as they drove back to London.

"Is that what she was telling you when I went upstairs to take off
my hat?" asked Sally.

"Yes."

"That was why you kissed her?"

"Exactly; did you see me kissing her?"

"Yes, when I came into the room."

"Yes; well, that's it. I always thought Durlacher was a fool," he
added meditatively. "Used to tell her so before she married him. What
in the name of God can you expect of a guardsman? He's one of those
men who just lives through life--taking all, giving nothing. I doubt
if the rotting of his body will be manure for the earth when he dies.
He'd sell it if it were."

Sally closed her eyes, then opened them suddenly to study his face.
Such stray phrases as these that fell from his lips always kept the
knowledge in her mind of how hard he was.

"Has he been unkind to her?" she hazarded. She forced a spurious
interest to please him.

"She says not--but then--she doesn't know. It's perhaps as well that
she doesn't. My experience of divorce leads me to see that it's a
dog's game; mountains are made out of molehills to weight the case
one way or another, and he could probably retaliate with a lot of
half-truths, quite unprovable; but the mere mentioning of them in
the courts would leave a stain on her. No, it's perhaps as well that
she doesn't know as much as I do. She just thinks they don't get on
and a patch can settle a thing like that. Lord! The numb