GEOFFREY. [_Looking up, frightened._] What?

AUSTIN. Ruth Chester landed this morning.

GEOFFREY. [_Starting up._] Impossible!

[_Rising._

AUSTIN. The moment Maggie signed my paper I cabled Miss Chester to
return. You can't go out west and institute proceedings for divorce
without her _knowing the whole truth from you_ first! You don't want her
to find it out from the newspapers, do you?

GEOFFREY. And you want _me_ to tell her?

AUSTIN. _To-day._ And to-morrow you start west!

GEOFFREY. [_Facing AUSTIN._] I _won't_ tell her!

AUSTIN. [_Calmly._] You've got to!

Geoffrey. I'd rather shoot myself; do you understand me--I'd rather
shoot myself!

AUSTIN. That's nothing! That would be decidedly the _easiest_ course out
of it, _and_ the most _cowardly_.

GEOFFREY. She'll hate me! She'll loathe me! How could she help it at
first! But just after a little, if I weren't there, the love she has for
me might move her somehow or other--and by degrees perhaps--to forgive--

AUSTIN. I don't deny that you will have to go through a terrible
degradation with her--but that is nothing compared with what you
deserve. If _you_ tell her, at least the humiliation is secret, locked
there between you two, and no one else in the world can ever know what
happens; _but_ if you send some one else, and no matter who,--_any one_
else but you _is_ an outsider,--you ask her to make a spectacle of her
humiliation, to let a third in as witness to the relations and emotions
between you two! It's insulting her _again_! Don't you _see_?

[_A pause._

GEOFFREY. Yes, I see! My God! I _must_ tell her myself.

AUSTIN. That's right, don't waver, make up your mind and do it--Come!

[_Urging him up._

GEOFFREY. [_Hesitates a moment._] And Jinny?

AUSTIN. Oh, she'll come round all right; she always does.

GEOFFREY. And she doesn't suspect?

AUSTIN. Not the slightest.

[_A pause._

GEOFFREY. Need she?

AUSTIN. The worst? No, _never_!

GEOFFREY. [_He rises, with new encouragement._] You'll give me your
word?

AUSTIN. Yes. [_Shakes his hand._] I know how much she loves you; _I_
wouldn't have her know anything. It's made us some ugly scenes, but they
soon pass, and when you are once out of your trouble for good, we'll
have no excuse, I'm sure, for any more!

GEOFFREY. Then I shall go to bed to-night with the respect still of at
least two women who are dear to me, my mother and Jinny, even if I lose
the respect and love of th