"Of course! Of course!" smiled John Rawn sardonically. "What would you expect? I am sorry. But I'll never tell any one about it, you can depend on that!" "You'll never tell!" went on Charles Halsey slowly. "You'll never _need_ to tell. But here's what I want to tell _you_, once more. Whatever this is--and it's about bad enough--it's come because of _you_. You--you were the cause of this!" "_You blame me_--why, what do you mean!" burst out John Rawn. "Where have _I_ been to blame, I'd like to know! What do you mean, young man?" "Every word I have told you, and more than I can tell you. You'll not think--you don't dare to face the truth; but there's the real truth. If you can't understand that, take what you can understand. Your wife isn't to blame--I'm to blame. Love is to blame. I love her. I've done this." "You have done--what?" "I've taken your wife away from you, can't you understand, you fool? She's going to marry me as soon--" "_Jennie_!--what's this fellow talking about?" The veins on John Rawn's forehead stood high and full. IX "He is only telling you the truth," she said calmly, wearily. "I don't care one picayune whether or not you know it, whether or not the world knows it! I'm tired! I'm done with all this sort of thing! Yes, I'm going to marry him as soon as we can get away. As soon as it's decent, if anything's decent any more!" "And you love him, you'll rob _me_, you'll leave _me_--you'll--why, are you all crazy? What are you talking about? When I've given you everything you've got--when you were so much to me! _Jennie!_" "No, no!" she raised a hand. "Don't talk about that! It's all over now." She tore at her throat, at her fingers, heaped up in his hands the gems she wore even then, the gems she had put upon her person to protect them from uncertain servants, gems which left her blazing like some waxen queen in her tomb--white, dead, enjeweled. "Take them!" she cried. "I don't want them." She went on, piling his hands full of glittering, flashing things. He stood gazing at her, stupefied. Then, slowly, the burden of years, the burden of business failure, and lastly this--the burden of the worst of man's discomfiture, the worst of a man's possible losses--began to weigh down upon him. He shortened visibly; shriveled; drooped. X They had no pity for him. Youth has no pity for age, love no pity for a mate's inefficiency; but after all some sort of contempt, at least, seemed due him. "Rawn," said Halsey, "it's pretty hard. We're all of us paying a hard, heavy price for what we thought we had. But we can't evade it, any part of it. It was your fault that Grace left me. We were going to part. You sent your wife after me, as you call it. I suppose Grace found that out. You know what she did then. I said I blame you, and so I do. But I was going to get a divorce--" "Divorce!--you divorce my daughter! John Rawn's daughter!" "Did you not divorce her mother--you, yourself?"