“With someone else, yes; but with you, no, not finally; you haven't the character and disposition to get away with it. You don't, secretly, approve of yourself, Peyton; and that will be fatal. The truth is that, while you want this now, in a year, or two years, or five, you'll demand the other. You think it is going to be different from everything else in heaven and earth, you're convinced it's going to stay all in the sky; but it will be on the solid familiar ground. Understand again--it isn't your plan I'm attacking; but your ability; that and your real ignorance of Mina Raff. “If you imagine for an instant that this love will be bigger than her work, if you suppose that, against her acting, it will last, you are an idiot for your pains. If I don't know the side of her you do, I have become fairly familiar with one you haven't dreamed of. She is a greater actress than people yet recognize, principally because of the general doubt about moving pictures; but that recognition will come, and, when it does, you will be swept out of sight. “No, you haven't the slightest suspicion of what it is about; that side of her, and it's very nearly the whole woman, is a blank. She admitted to me that she couldn't understand it herself. But what she is doing is dragging into her genius what it needs. She loves you now, and tomorrow she'll love a Belgian violinist, a great engineer, a Spanish prince at San Sebastian. How will you take sitting in the salon and hearing them padding around over your head? It's no good your getting mad at me; I am not blaming Mina Raff; you are. I admire her tremendously. “In the beginning I said she could watch out for herself, and I intimated that I was reasonably indifferent to what happened to you: it is Claire I am concerned about. Unfortunately for her, and without much reason, she loves you too. When Mina is done with you and you stray back, from, perhaps, South America, Claire won't be here. I don't mean that she will have gone away, or be dead in the familiar sense. I haven't any doubt but that she would live with you again--she is not small-minded and she's far more unconventional than you--what there was of her.” “If you or anyone else thinks that I don't admire Claire--” he stopped desperately. “We won't get far talking,” Peyton added; “even if all you have said is a fact. You can't hit on much that I've missed. You might just as well curse me and let me go.” “Nothing of the sort,” Lee Randon returned equably; “that's exactly what I have no intention of doing. In the interest of Claire I must try to open your eyes.” The younger man said indignantly: “You talk as though I were a day-old kitten. It's cursed impertinent: I don't seem to remember asking for so much advice.” * * * * *