“Your conduct is abominable! You are shameless! I can well understand why your wretched Dempsi ran away, preferring to die in the bush than be any longer associated with such an infernal little termagant!” The Selsburys were a courtly people, but there was a limit to their patience. He was savage, cruel, and knew he was behaving unpardonably before the words were out of his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. Her face was set, a mask that showed nothing of her thoughts. “I’m extremely sorry. I shouldn’t have said that--please forgive me.” Still she did not speak. Her eyes were tragic in their steadfast, unwinking gaze. He stole quietly from the room, and then she spoke her thoughts aloud. “How absurd not to have the telephone connected with the study! I’ll write to the Post Office this very night.” A very silent dinner. Gordon was going out and was resplendent in his raiment. “I am taking a friend to a theatre to-night,” he said. “I haven’t seen a show for years,” she sighed. “This would not interest you. It is a Russian play dealing with social unrest.” She sighed again. “I love Russian plays. All the characters die so nicely and you know where you are. In a musical comedy you can never be sure who anybody is.” Gordon shuddered. “This is not a play for a young girl,” he said gently. She was unconvinced. “If you very much wanted me to come, I could dress in five minutes,” she suggested. “I hardly know what I shall do with myself to-night.” “Think out to-morrow’s breakfast,” he said bitterly. Alone, she gave her mind alternately to serious thought and the new gramophone. She did think of Dempsi sometimes, and a little uneasily. Not that she had loved that strange progeny of Michael Dempsi and Marie Stezzaganni. Dempsi came into her life as an earthquake intrudes upon the domesticity of a Californian farmer. He shifted the angle of things and had been a great disturbance. She never really remembered Dempsi, except that he was very slight and very wiry and very voluble. She remembered that he had thrown himself at her feet, had threatened to shoot her, had told her he adored her and was ready to forsake his career in the church. Finally, on a hot February morning (she remembered that the roses were thick in the big garden) he had flung his worldly possessions at her feet, taken an intense and tearful farewell, and had dashed madly into the bush, never to return.