him? What right
have you to reproach me, abuse me?"

Bojo attempted to burst in on the stream of meaninglessness and repeated
phrases. He, too, saw through the assumption of hysteria, shielding
behind a cloak of weakness a cold and covetous woman.

"My dear Mrs. Drake," he said icily, "you are proud of your position in
society. Let me put this to you. Don't you realize that if your husband
fails for a million and a half and you continue living as you have lived
that it will be a public scandal? Don't you realize what people will
say?"

"No, I don't," she cried: "I don't admit any such ridiculous nonsense. I
know that I have a right to my life, to my existence. I know what is
mine is mine. If he has lost money, other people have lost money in the
same way who gamble just as he has. They should take their losses, too,
without coming to people who are not responsible, who don't believe in
such things. And then what good will it do? The money's mine. Why throw
good money after bad? I tell you that he has never had a thought about
the duties and responsibilities to his family; I have. I won't
impoverish myself, I won't impoverish my family, I won't, I won't, and I
won't be badgered and brow-beaten in this brutal way. You're a bad
daughter, you've always been a disobedient, wicked daughter. You've
always been this way to me from the first. Now you think you can force
me into this, but you shan't."

"Mother," started Patsie stonily, but she was interrupted by a fresh
torrent of words.

"No, no, I can't, I won't, I'm ill, I have been ill for days. Do you
want to kill me? I suppose that's what you want. Go on. Put me down,
make me ill. Oh, my God, my God, I can't stand it, I can't stand it. I
can't. Ring for the doctor, the doctor or some one."

"Come away," said Bojo, taking Patsie by the arm as Mrs. Drake went into
the paroxysm which she knew was perfectly assumed. "It's useless trying
to say anything more to her. To-morrow perhaps Doris and her husband may
have more effect."

They went out without even looking back.

Patsie was in such a rage of indignation, shaking from head to foot,
that he had to take her in his arms and quiet her.

"What shall we say to Daddy?" she said at last in despair.

"Lie," he said. "Tell him that it will be done."

But when they came back into the library Drake was gone. He didn't
return all that night. Afterwards from what they learned he must have
spent the night hours in wandering