Mrs. Tate turned to her husband with a look of admiration, her breath coming and going in quick gasps. "Percy, that's the wisest thing you've ever said in your life." A moment later she added, with a change of tone: "But isn't the whole thing _too_ absurd?" He started to go upstairs. "You know we're due at the Bigelows in an hour?" "Wait a minute," said Mrs. Tate. "I want to think over what you said. You can't imagine how this thing has worried me. It's all due to my meddling. Oh, I know that; you needn't say anything to me about it. But I'm determined to help that poor woman if I can. Oh, if I had only followed your advice, and let them alone!" she moaned. "There's no use worrying now. The mischief's done. He would probably have got tired of her anyway." "If something isn't done to bring him back to her," she went on without heeding his remark, "it will kill her. I'm sure of that. If you could only see her. She looks like a ghost, and her hands tremble so! I don't believe she's slept a wink for weeks. I don't see how she gets through her performances. A clinging creature like her just _lives_ on affection. Before she was married she always had her mother to take care of her. To think that that man should treat her so! Oh, it's a shame, it's a shame!" Tate was standing at the door. "If she's going to kill herself over that fellow, she might as well have gone on with her diving and killed herself that way. You ask her if she doesn't want to go back to it," he added, with the quizzical smile, "and see if she won't jump at the chance." "Do you suppose that she can suspect for an instant that her husband fell in love with her performance?" she said, her eyes following her husband up the stairs. "She probably hasn't reasoned it out, but I haven't a doubt she feels it intuitively," he replied, continuing his ascent. "You just ask her if she doesn't want to make the plunge again and see what she'll say," he concluded, smiling down at her from the floor above. XX Mrs. Tate tried, by an almost impassioned kindness, to atone for her neglect of Blanche during her absence from London. She sent her flowers from her conservatory, she bought gifts for the little Jeanne, she called at the apartment in Upper Bedford Place nearly every morning. During these visits she did not once meet Jules; Blanche told her that he always went away soon after breakfast, and seldom returned before dinner. Sometimes he did not accompany her to the Hippodrome, but he never failed to appear there during the evening. The management had offered to reëngage Miss King as soon as her contract expired, and the diver thought of postponing her return to America; but they had not as yet come to terms, as the girl wanted a much larger salary than she had been receiving.