Lawson turned away, strode back to her and looked questioningly, sternly, into her eyes. Even in her excitement she knew he was white as his shirt, that his eyes glowed strangely and his hand as he grasped her arm was cold as ice. She felt herself trembling as she leaned against the mantel, awaiting his words breathlessly. As she had appealed from the depths of her being, so she expected the truth from his. Were he given to wavering it were better, it were the only manly thing to do, to tell her even now and free her. She could live through that. The other were impossible. But he made no answer. She saw his chest heave as a woman's might in anguish, she saw the set of his face, strong, determined, though the pallor lingered. Then he spoke suddenly. "Your father is in there?" he questioned, motioning across the hall. "Yes," she said, her eyes wide with wonder. "I am going to speak to him, Frances." He took her hands gently, "I am going to ask him to give you to me." This, then, was his answer. Her lips trembled. Lawson looked long and searchingly, saying no other word. He bent, kissed her, almost as if in consecration, and walked with quick step across the room. Frances leaned, shaken with tremulous happiness; she saw the glitter of jewels on the table and smiled happily, she took from its case the hoop of diamonds and ran it on her finger, her eyes too dim to watch its sparkle aright. The others she left untouched. She heard the voices across the hall, and she remembered again, with a shock of sorrow, what this would mean to her father. How could she leave him; how could he let her go? She walked across the room restlessly, she heard a chair pushed back--Lawson's footstep. A sudden shyness possessed her. Down at the end of the room was another door, opening on the hall behind the stairway, she closed it softly, and stood there hidden as Lawson's quick step rang across the hall; then she slipped into the dining-room, and pulled aside the portière. Her father's head was sunken on the table, his arm flung above it. She ran up to him. "Father," she pleaded as she bent over him. But he never moved. "Father, don't think I love you less," she whispered. He pushed back his chair and faced her. "Did you know," he demanded, "did you know Lawson was a divorced man?" XVII "Divorced!" She felt herself reeling, hands outstretched before her, feeling for something tangible. "Divorced!" "My God, I might have known you did not know." "It's not true!" she whispered hoarsely. "True!" repeated the professor with bitter emphasis.