"Are you sure?" raising her dark eyes, "that you mean to be kind?"

"Yes, sure," he said harshly. "Go on."

"You are a little rough with me; a-almost insolent--"

"I--I have to be. Good God! Alixe, do you think this is nothing to
me?--this wretched mess we have made of life! Do you think my roughness
and abruptness comes from anything but pity?--pity for us both, I tell
you. Do you think I can remain unmoved looking on the atrocious
punishment you have inflicted on yourself?--tethered to--to _that_!--for
life!--the poison of the contact showing in your altered voice and
manner!--in the things you laugh at, in the things you live for--in the
twisted, misshapen ideals that your friends set up on a heap of nuggets
for you to worship? Even if we've passed through the sea of mire, can't
we at least clear the filth from our eyes and see straight and steer
straight to the anchorage?"

She had covered her pallid face with her muff; he bent forward, his hand
on the arm of her chair.

"Alixe, was there nothing to you, after all? Was it only a tinted ghost
that was blown into my bungalow that night--only a twist of shredded
marsh mist without substance, without being, without soul?--to be blown
away into the shadows with the next and stronger wind--and again to
drift out across the waste places of the world? I thought I knew a
sweet, impulsive comrade of flesh and blood; warm, quick, generous,
intelligent--and very, very young--too young and spirited, perhaps, to
endure the harness which coupled her with a man who failed her--and
failed himself.

"That she has made another--and perhaps more heart-breaking mistake, is
bitter for me, too--because--because--I have not yet forgotten. And even
if I ceased to remember, the sadness of it must touch me. But I have not
forgotten, and because I have not, I say to you, anchor! and hold fast.
Whatever _he_ does, whatever you suffer, whatever happens, steer
straight on to the anchorage. Do you understand me?"

Her gloved hand, moving at random, encountered his and closed on it
convulsively.

"Do you understand?" he repeated.

"Y-es, Phil."

Head still sinking, face covered with the silvery fur, the tremors from
her body set her hand quivering on his.

Heart-sick, he forbore to ask for the explanation; he knew the real
answer, anyway--whatever she might say--and he understood that any game
in that house was Ruthven's game, and the guests his guests; and that
Gerald was only one of