Perhaps--oh, curse the thing! It wasn't a matter for him to meddle with--of course not. But it needed somebody--and whom else did they have? It ended in his reaching the deliberate and most unwelcome conclusion, after much struggle with himself, that it was his duty to go to his sister-in-law's house and enter upon the delicate and perilous office of peacemaker. Which he did. Margaret met him distantly. They froze each other. He had heard from Victor, he told her bluntly, feeling his poverty of phrases suited to womankind. Her lips straightened. She held out her hand. Could she see the letter? He reflected a moment. The letter as he thought of it did not seem particularly pacific, viewed from the stand-point of a deserted wife, so he answered no. Then he began awkwardly and without preliminaries to explain. He had come to see if things could not be arranged between them--patched up for a while with the hope that time would bring them right. They were both young, and doubtless both had been somewhat in fault. She interrupted him here to ask pointedly, "Has your brother told you anything about the point at issue?" He was forced to answer that he had not. "Then you are not competent to arbitrate," she said, quietly, and the subject was not easy to re-open after that. He went away baffled in his endeavors, berating himself for a blundering fool, but strengthened in the belief that the blame was not all on one side. The girl was ice. As he thought it over that night, one thing came back to him again and again. She had said, "This is a thing that must be settled without a go-between, and _some day it will be_." What did she mean by that? How would it be settled? She had looked uncompromising as she said it. What did she intend to do--get a divorce? Of course she could get it--on the palpable ground of desertion. He could see a difference in her attitude toward Victor as the months went by. At first there had been a reserve, a suspension of judgment, then apathy, and of late growing resentment. He had correctly interpreted her states of mind, though he did not appreciate the cause. As the months went by and Victor did not come, did not write, did not once even ask about his child, her heart hardened against him. This ignoring of Philip seemed worse to her almost than his treatment of herself. How could he stay away from his child? How could he be false to a helpless little thing like this that he had brought into the world? How could he-- Then she would snatch little Philip up in a passion of tenderness and cry in her heart, "I will be father and mother both to you, my baby, my poor little forsaken baby!"