or I'm going to marry him."

"No, you're not!" he blurted out.

"Well, I am!" She drew nearer and with her hands on the table looked
down into his wind-worn face and dim eyes. "I say you've got to be
decent. Do you understand?" Her body was as lithe, as beautiful, as that
of a tigress as she leaned thus, and an unalterable resolution blazed in
her eyes as she went on, a deeper significance coming into her voice:
"Furthermore, I'm as good as married to him right now, and I don't care
who knows it."

The old man's head lifted with a jerk, and he looked at her with mingled
fear and fury. "What do you mean?"

"Anything you want to have it mean," she replied. "You drive him out and
you drive me out--that's what I mean."

Blondell saw in her face the look of the woman who is willing to assume
any guilt, any shame for her lover, and, dropping his eyes before her
gaze, growled a curse and left the room.

Fan turned to her lover with a ringing, boyish laugh, "It's all right,
Dell; he's surrendered!"

III

Lester passed the month before his marriage in alternating uplifts and
depressions, and the worst of it lay in the fact that his moments of
exaltation were sensual--of the flesh, and born of the girl's
presence--while his depression came from his sane contemplation of the
fate to which he was hastening. He went one day to talk it all over with
Mrs. Baker, who now held a dark opinion of Fan Blondell. She frankly
advised him to break the engagement and to go back to England.

"I can't do that, my dear Mrs. Baker. I am too far committed to Fan to
do that. Besides, I know she would make a terrible scene. She would
follow me. And besides, I am fond of her, you know. She's very
beautiful, now--and she does love me, poor beggar! I wonder at it, but
she does." Then he brightened up. "You know she has the carriage of a
duchess. Really, if she were trained a little she would be quite
presentable anywhere."

Mrs. Baker shook her head. "She's at her best this minute. Look at the
mother; that's what she'll be like in a few years."

"Oh no--not really! She's an improvement--a vast improvement--on the old
people, don't you think?"

"You can't make a purse out of a sow's ear. Fan will sag right down
after marriage. Mark my words. She's a slattern in her blood, and before
the honeymoon is over she'll be slouching around in old slippers and her
nightgown. That is plain talk, Mr. Lester, but I can't let you go into
this trap wit