There was a pause--a pause in which Mrs. Romayne’s eyes seemed to dilate and contract, and dilate again under the suffering to which she allowed expression in neither tone nor gesture; and then there came from Julian four awkward, hardly audible words, jerked out rather than spoken, with long pauses intervening: “How do you know?” A short, sharp breath came from Mrs. Romayne, and then she said, with cold decisiveness, though it seemed that nothing would take that hoarseness from her voice: “It matters very little how I know. That I know by one chance; that some one else may know by another; some one else again by another--the details in each case, when the chances are innumerable, are nothing! Have you lived all this time in London not to know that discovery is inevitable--to wonder ‘how’ when it comes?” There was a bitterness, a keenness of scorn in her voice which stung him like a lash, and he answered hotly: “After all, mother, we are not living in Arcadia! We don’t talk about these things, and I’m awfully sorry, I’m sure, that this should have come to your knowledge; I’m awfully sorry to offend you. But, hang it all, I’m not worse than lots of fellows about!” His tone had gathered confidence and defiance as he went on, and it seemed to shake her a little. Her hold on the mantelpiece tightened, and she spoke quickly and rather nervously. “It’s very likely,” she said. “I don’t want to argue the principle with you. Young men have their own ideas, I know; but how many young men--drop out? How many young men, with good positions, good chances, somehow or other get into bad odour; get to be not received--or, if they are received, it is with certain reservations--through this kind of thing? Oh, of course I don’t say it’s inevitable. There are lots of men about, as you say! But it’s an awful risk. In the case of a young man like you, with no title to the position you hold in society but your--your personality, don’t you see, it is a double and treble risk. It is playing with edged tools; it is holding a knife to your own throat. You would go under so horribly easily.” She paused abruptly, as though the image before her eyes were too terrible to her to be pursued further, and tried to moisten her dry lips, on which the touch of paint had cracked now, showing how white they were beneath. The ghastliness of the incongruity between her manner and the superficialities of which she spoke was indescribable. Julian did not speak; he was moving one foot to and fro slowly over the carpet, at which he gazed immovably, and his mother went on almost immediately: “You must give it up, Julian,” she said incisively. “I will do anything that is necessary in the way of money; I don’t want to be hard upon you. Anything the girl wants you shall have; but you must break with her at once.”