With eyes half crazed Daphne stood staring from her father's grim face to Sheridan Kaire's blanching features. "Do you mean----" she gasped, "that there is another woman? Someone who has a--a claim? Someone who----" "We will let Martha tell her own story," said Jaffrey Bretton. Very softly he stepped to the table and began to rummage among the loose keys. "I have tried not to act impulsively," he said. With unmistakable significance he glanced back at Kaire. "It will [213] take me at least a minute, Kaire," he said, "to fit a key to this door. . . . As I have remarked once before--many men have found time to change their minds in a minute." "I have better things to do in a minute than change my mind!" boasted Kaire. As stealthily as a cat he slipped round the table to Daphne and took her in his arms while Jaffrey Bretton tinkered with the lock. "Oh, my little beautiful!" he implored her. "My white--white darling! My lily girl! The only sweet--the only decent love I've ever known! You won't fail me now, will you? I have not failed _you_! I never claimed," he besought her, "that there had never been any other women! Surely you're not going to hold any silly Past against me? You, my good angel! My----" Unconsciously his excited voice slipped from its whisper. "From to-day on!" he vowed. "From----" "From what time to-day on?" asked Bretton a bit dryly. Vaguely through the opening door loomed the white figure of a woman with her elbow crooked across her eyes. Except that the [214] lamp in the cabin was not unduly bright she might have been any normal person shielding her dark-attuned optic nerves from some unexpected glare. Yet the tropical pallor that gleamed both above and below the crooked elbow was oddly suggestive of floridness, and the faded muslin gown of a skirt-and-sleeve fashion ten years outlawed, molded her sumptuous figure with all the sleek sensuousness of satin. "Martha," said Jaffrey Bretton very gently, "this cabin is hung with crimson, cushioned with crimson, carpeted with crimson! Will you still come if I ask you to?" "It ees as I have said, Mr. Bret-ton," answered the faintly foreign voice. Then Kaire with a cry sprang forward and slammed the door in the woman's wincing face. "Stop! Stop, Bretton!" he begged. "Just a minute! Just a minute!--give me one tiny little more minute to think!" His forehead was beaded with sweat his hands shaking like aspens. "I have one more minute I will be very glad to give you," said Bretton. [215] Like a person distracted, Kaire stood staring all around him. Half askance from over his shoulder his glanced flashed back at Daphne, wavered an instant, and settled again on her face with a curious sort of gasp. "Do--do you _still_ hold to your word?" he stammered. Fevered, frightened, strangling back her sobs as best she could, Daphne lifted her strained but indomitable little face to his. "I--will--not break my word!" she smiled.