Perhaps I imagined that he looked at me queerly. I had made a great deal of money out of my association with Grierson, I had valued very highly being an important member of the group to which he belonged; but to-night, as I watched him eating and drinking greedily, I hated him even as I hated myself. And after dinner, when he started talking with a ridicule that was a thinly disguised bitterness about the Citizens Union and their preparations for a campaign I left him and went to bed. Before a week had passed my painful emotions had largely subsided, and with my accustomed resiliency I had regained the feeling of self-respect so essential to my happiness. I was free. My only anxiety was for Nancy, who had gone to New York the day after my last talk with her; and it was only by telephoning to her house that I discovered when she was expected to return.... I found her sitting beside one of the open French windows of her salon, gazing across at the wooded hills beyond the Ashuela. She was serious, a little pale; more exquisite, more desirable than ever; but her manner implied the pressure of control, and her voice was not quite steady as she greeted me. "You've been away a long time," I said. "The dressmakers," she answered. Her colour rose a little. "I thought they'd never get through." "But why didn't you drop me a line, let me know when you were coming?" I asked, taking a chair beside her, and laying my hand on hers. She drew it gently away. "What's the matter?" I asked. "I've been thinking it all over--what we're doing. It doesn't seem right, it seems terribly wrong." "But I thought we'd gone over all that," I replied, as patiently as I could. "You're putting it on an old-fashioned, moral basis." "But there must be same basis," she urged. "There are responsibilities, obligations--there must be!--that we can't get away from. I can't help feeling that we ought to stand by our mistakes, and by our bargains; we made a choice--it's cheating, somehow, and if we take this--what we want--we shall be punished for it." "But I'm willing to be punished, to suffer, as I told you. If you loved me--"