As though some subtle influence from the one woman had penetrated to the heart of the other, Clemence’s face had turned quite white. For her, too, the personal aspect of the situation seemed suddenly to sink into abeyance. Her head was lifted, and her eyes, filled with a creeping apprehension, were fixed full upon Mrs. Romayne, oblivious of anything but the one interest which they held in common. The man watching them was vaguely conscious of something about the two women which put him quite away from them; which made him the merest spectator of something to which he had no key. “I saw him last night,” said Clemence, hurriedly and fearfully; “he came to say good-bye!” A kind of hoarse cry broke from Mrs. Romayne. “Good-bye!” she cried, as though appealing to some encircling environment of fate. “And she let him go! She let him go!” She stopped herself, forcing down her passion with an iron hand, and went on in a tone only colder and more decisive in its greater rapidity than before. “He has made a mistake; you cannot understand, of course. No doubt it seems to you that everything to be desired is comprised in the miserable subterfuge of flight. No doubt----” She was interrupted. With a low cry of unutterable horror Clemence had drawn a step nearer to her, pressing her baby passionately to her heart. “Flight!” she cried. “Flight! Ah, I knew! I knew there was something wrong! What is it? Oh, what is it? My dear, my dear, what have you done? What have you done?” There was an instant’s dead silence as the cry died away and Clemence stood with her beseeching eyes dark and dilated, her uplifted face white and quivering, appealing, as it seemed, for an answer, to Julian himself. Falconer was looking straight before him, his face set and grim, passive, not only with the natural passivity of a man in the presence of inevitable anguish, but with the involuntary self-forgetfulness of a man in the presence of a power greater than he can understand. Mrs. Romayne had paused as though stopped by some kind of hard, annoyed surprise. Then Mrs. Romayne went on in a thin, tense voice: “There is no time to waste over what has been done; the point is to retrieve it! He must come back at once. Where is he?” With a sudden quick movement Clemence turned, crossed the room, and laid the child tenderly in the little cot standing by the fire. She pressed her face down for one instant to the tiny sleep-flushed cheek, and then rose and came back to Mrs. Romayne and Falconer, her face white and resolute, her eyes shining, glancing from one to the other as she spoke. “Will there be time?” she said. “Can I get to him before he sails? There is a woman downstairs who will take care of my child. He is alone! He may be doing----Flight! What can flight do for him if he has done wrong? He doesn’t always know! I am his wife, and I must go and help him. Will there be time?”