anything this summer--lately--about
the Ruthvens?"

"No."

"Nothing at all?"

"Not a word."

"You knew they were at Newport as usual."

"I took it for granted."

"And you have heard no rumours?--no gossip concerning them? Nothing
about a yacht?"

"Where was I to hear it? What gossip? What yacht?"

His sister said very seriously: "Alixe has been very careless."

"Everybody is. What of it?"

"It is understood that she and Jack Ruthven have separated."

He looked up quickly: "Who told you that?"

"A woman wrote me from Newport. . . . And Alixe is here and Jack Ruthven
is in New York. Several people have--I have heard about it from several
sources. I'm afraid it's true, Phil."

They looked into each other's troubled eyes; and he said: "If she has
done this it is the worse of two evils she has chosen. To live with him
was bad enough, but this is the limit."

"I know it. She cannot afford to do such a thing again. . . . Phil, what
is the matter with her? She simply cannot be sane and do such a
thing--can she?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Well, I do. She is not sane. She has made herself horridly conspicuous
among conspicuous people; she has been indiscreet to the outer edge of
effrontery. Even that set won't stand it always--especially as their men
folk are quite crazy about her, and she leads a train of them about
wherever she goes--the little fool!

"And now, if it's true, that there's to be a separation--what on earth
will become of her? I ask you, Phil, for I don't know. But men know what
becomes eventually of women who slap the world across the face with
over-ringed fingers.

"If--if there's any talk about it--if there's newspaper talk--if
there's a divorce--who will ask her to their houses? Who will condone
this thing? Who will tolerate it, or her? Men--and men only--the odious
sort that fawn on her now and follow her about half-sneeringly. They'll
tolerate it; but their wives won't; and the kind of women who will
receive and tolerate her are not included in my personal experience.
What a fool she has been!--good heavens, what a fool!"

A trifle paler than usual, he said: "There is no real harm in her. I
know there is not."

"You are very generous, Phil--"

"No, I am trying to be truthful. And I say there is no harm in her. I
have made up my mind on that score." He leaned nearer his sister and
laid one hand on hers where it lay across the hammock's edge:

"Nina; no woman could have done w