t they do
believe. It is killing David Livingstone, and as for Elizabeth--She'll
have to be told, mother. He's alive. He's well. And he has deliberately
deserted them all. He ought to be shot."

"You didn't see him, Wallie. I did. He's been through something, I don't
know what. I didn't sleep last night for thinking of his face. It had
despair in it."

"All right," he said, angrily pausing before her. "What do you intend to
do? Let them go on as they are, hoping and waiting; lauding him to the
skies as a sort of superman? The thing to do is to tell the truth."

"But we don't know the truth, Wallie. There's something behind it all."

"Nothing very creditable, be sure of that," he pronounced. "Do you think
it is fair to Elizabeth to let her waste her life on the memory of a man
who's deserted her?"

"It would be cruel to tell her."

"You've got to be cruel to be kind, sometimes," he said oracularly.
"Why, the man may be married. May be anything. A taxi driver! Doesn't
that in itself show that he's hiding from something?"

She sat, a small obese figure made larger by her furs, and stared at him
with troubled eyes.

"I don't know, Wallie," she said helplessly. "In a way, it might be
better to tell her. She could put him out of her mind, then. But I hate
to do it. It's like stabbing a baby."

He understood her, and nodded. When, after taking a turn or two about
the room he again stopped in front of her his angry flush had subsided.

"It's the devil of a mess," he commented. "I suppose the square thing
to do is to tell Doctor David, and let him decide. I've got too much at
stake to be a judge of what to do."

He went upstairs soon after that, leaving her still in her chair,
swathed in furs, her round anxious face bent forward in thought. He
had rarely seen her so troubled, so uncertain of her next move, and he
surmised, knowing her, that her emotions were a complex of anxiety for
himself with Elizabeth, of pity for David, and of the memory of Dick
Livingstone's haggard face.

She sat alone for some time and then went reluctantly up the stairs to
her bedroom. She felt, like Wallie, that she had too much at stake to
decide easily what to do.

In the end she decided to ask Doctor Reynolds' advice, and in the
morning she proceeded to do it. Reynolds was interested, even a little
excited, she thought, but he thought it better not to tell David. He
would himself go to Harrison Miller with it.

"You say he knew you