of man he is," laughed the
woman.

The girl looked at her watch. "He will be here shortly; he shall tell us
himself."

"How do you mean?"

"That here, between the two of us, he shall decide--this very night." She
showed her white face to the woman. "Do you think I could live through a
second day like to this?"

"The scene would be ridiculous."

"There will be none here to enjoy the humour of it."

"He will not understand."

"Oh, yes, he will," the girl laughed. "Come, you have all the
advantages; you are rich, you are clever; you belong to his class. If he
elects to stop with me, it will be because he is my man--mine. Are you
afraid?"

The woman shivered. She wrapped her fur cloak about her closer and sat
down again, and Tommy returned to her proofs. It was press-night, and
there was much to be done.

He came a little later, though how long the time may have seemed to the
two women one cannot say. They heard his footstep on the stair. The
woman rose and went forward, so that when he opened the door she was the
first he saw. But he made no sign. Possibly he had been schooling
himself for this moment, knowing that sooner or later it must come. The
woman held out her hand to him with a smile.

"I have not the honour," he said.

The smile died from her face. "I do not understand," she said.

"I have not the honour," he repeated. "I do not know you."

The girl was leaning with her back against the desk in a somewhat mannish
attitude. He stood between them. It will always remain Life's chief
comic success: the man between two women. The situation has amused the
world for so many years. Yet, somehow, he contrived to maintain a
certain dignity.

"Maybe," he continued, "you are confounding me with a Dick Danvers who
lived in New York up to a few months ago. I knew him well--a worthless
scamp you had done better never to have met."

"You bear a wonderful resemblance to him," laughed the woman.

"The poor fool is dead," he answered. "And he left for you, my dear
lady, this dying message: that, from the bottom of his soul, he was sorry
for the wrong he had done you. He asked you to forgive him--and forget
him."

"The year appears to be opening unfortunately for me," said the woman.
"First my lover, then my husband."

He had nerved himself to fight the living. This was a blow from the
dead. The man had been his friend.

"Dead?"

"He was killed, it appears, in that last expedition i