or lady was profoundly wretched. Tears were not far off. She
would not for the world have wept before the boy. He had enough to
bear without her tears.

"Where is your father?" she asked.

"He is in his office. You will speak to him? You angel! Tell him how
impossible it is that Stella and I could give up each other. You love
her, Mother, don't you? The bird-like thing! I remember you said at
first that she was like a bird. She has flown into my heart and I
cannot turn her out. Say..."

"I will say all I Can, Terry. Do you feel fit to go back to the
others?"

"They don't want me. They are quite happy knocking about the
billiard-balls. Evelyn would know, and I don't think I could stand
little Earnshaw's chaffing ways."

Boyishly he looked at himself in the glass. He had rumpled his hair
out of its usual order. There was a bright colour in his cheeks. He
looked brilliantly handsome. What he said was:

"Lord, what an outsider I look!"

She left him there and went off to look for her husband. Her heart was
very heavy. Already she knew that the compromise she had to suggest
would be received with scorn. It was a weak womanly compromise, just
the kind of thing a man will put his foot on and squelch utterly.

He turned round as she came in.

"Well, Mary," he said. "I've been having a very unpleasant discussion
with Terry. It ended where it began. He would not listen to me."

She came and stood behind his chair. The fire was low in the grate.
There was the intolerable smell of a smoking lamp in the room. The
reading-lamp on the table was flaring. She turned it down and
replenished the fire. The discomfort of it all--the room felt cold and
dismal--depressed her further.

"The poor boy!" she said. "What are we to do, Shawn? You can't expect
him to give up Stella without any explanation. He would be a poor
creature if he could--not your son or mine. Shawn, you will have to
tell him. How could you leave it to me?"

"And if I do, what then?"

She shook her head. She did not know what then: or rather she did not
wish to answer the question.

She was sitting on the arm of his chair. He leant his head against her
wearily. In the glass above the chimney-piece, tilted towards them,
she saw his face and was frightened. Were the purple shadows really
there, or did she only imagine them?

"If such a story had been told to me about you, Mary," he asked, "do
you suppose it would have ma