His voice was more stern than reproachful, and Mrs. Newbold, glancing up at him furtively, thought how cold and impassive was his face. She paused a moment before answering him, and the flames from the pine-logs on the wide hearth, leaping high, revealed a half-anxious, half-hesitating expression in her blue eyes and about her delicately-cut mouth. She held a screen of scarlet Ibis feathers, as she sat in a low chair, to shield her from the heat, and her hand trembled just enough to set the scarlet feathers moving, like so many vivid fire-tongues. She answered somewhat evasively: "And if I did, Philip, what then? Is the old wound so deep it cannot be healed, and do you, a Hercules among men, shrink from the light touch of a woman's fingers?" "We are but courageous," he made answer, "according to time and opportunity, and the weakness or strength of the temptation. A woman's hand has been the cause of a man's undoing ever since the world began, Esther. I have no desire to become another sacrifice on the altar of a woman's vanity." "What do you fear, Philip?" she asked, presently, turning the feather fan round and round in her fingers, and watching him intently as she spoke. "What do I fear? Everything and nothing. You, who know the whole miserable old story, must also know the bitterness of its ending. What do I fear? I fear Patricia; I fear the light coming and going in her eyes; I fear the grace and beauty of her motions; I fear the subtle witchery of her voice; I fear the sweetness of her smile, the studied trick of her down-drooped mouth, the soft lingering pressure of her hand; I fear--but there, why fight against shadows? I have the remedy in my own hands--I can leave you, Esther. Even you cannot compel me to see her." He had risen as he spoke, and moved about restlessly, stopping half-unconsciously at a table that stood in his path, and fingered absently the several articles of _bric-à-brac_ upon it. Esther followed his movements with her eyes, a look of pity and yet triumph on her face. As his voice grew passionate, she dropped the feather-screen, and clasping her hands across her knee, drew a quick long breath; but when he came towards her again, she sank back into her former listless attitude. He stood up tall and straight before her, resting one arm upon the chimney-shelf, and looked down at her with dark excited eyes, which the slight smile upon his lips failed to counterbalance. "Did you ask her here with some deep-laid plan of reconciliation? Esther, was that your motive? Did you think, knowing me since your girlhood--not so many years ago, Esther--and finding me fairly good-natured and forgiving, as men go, that you would take the spindle of fate into your own hands, and like Atropos of old, cut the tangled skein of my life, in the vain hope of reuniting it with hers? It was kindly meant, Esther, but--it cannot be." Mrs. Newbold stopped him with an upward gesture of her hand.