"I have faced--everything," Beryl went on. She was sitting on a cushion between Christina and the fire, her tea cup in her hands. "You have also--haven't you, Christina?" "About Ambrose? Yes. He has passed. The law will kill him. He expects that. I think he would be uncomfortable if he was spared. He told me once, that all the way out to New Caledonia, he grieved about the people who had been guillotined for the same offense as he had committed. The unfairness of it! He never posed. Can you imagine him posing? I've seen him blush when I joked about that funny little trick of his; have you noticed it? Rubbing his chin with the back of his hand?" Beryl nodded. "He said he had tried to get out of the habit," Christina continued. "No, Ambrose couldn't pretend, or do a mean thing; or lie. I'm getting sentimental, my dear. Ambrose was distressed by sentimentality. Mother kissed his hand the day I stood for the first time. He was so bewildered!" They laughed together. "Are you marrying Steppe?" asked Christina. She felt no call to excuse the intimacy of the question. "I suppose so. There are reasons. At present he is rather impersonal. As impersonal as a marriage certificate or a church. I have no imagination perhaps. I shall not tell him. You don't think I should--about Ronnie, I mean?" Christina shook her red head. "No. As I see it, no. If you must marry him, you are doing enough without handing him another kind of whip to flog you with." "I told Ambrose: that was enough," said Beryl. "My conscience was for him. Steppe wants no more than he gives." The clock chimed five. Ambrose at that moment was passing through the black gates of Wechester County Prison and Ronald Morelle was taking tea with Madame Ritti. IV Madame lived in a big house at St. John's Wood. A South American minister had lived there, and had spent a fortune on its interior adornment. Reputable artists had embellished its walls and ceilings, and if the decorations were of the heavy florid type, it is a style which makes for grandeur. The vast drawing-room was a place of white and gold, of glittering candelabras and crimson velvet hangings. How Madame had come to be its possessor is a long and complicated story. The minister was recalled from London on the earnest representations of the Foreign Office and a budding scandal was denied its full and fascinating development. Madame had many friends, and her house was invariably full of guests. Some stayed a long time with her. She liked girls about her, she told the innocent vicar who called regularly, and might have been calling still, if his wife had not decided that if Madame required any spiritual consolation, she would put her own pew at her disposal.