In her pocket was a letter from her father--the most difficult letter that it had ever fallen to Dick Cheriton's lot to compose. Theoretically he thought social prejudices absurd--as became an artist to whom God had given his soul--and he had often insisted on their ineptitude. In the case of his own daughter, however, he would have preferred to see them treated with respect. There was a likeness to Lucas Field here. Field also dwelt on the hill-top, but he wanted his son, if he ever had one, to boast a stainless mother. Cheriton had not indited curses, like the fathers in melodrama, and the people who have "found religion"; only parents in melodrama, and some "Christians" who go to church twice every Sunday, are infamous enough to curse their children; he had told her that if she found herself forsaken, she was to cable for her passage-money back to Duluth. But that he was ashamed and broken by what she had done, he had not attempted to conceal; and as she stood there, gazing down on the rue Tronchet, Mamie was recalling the confession to which this was an answer. Phrases that she had used came back to her:--"I have done my best, but my love was too strong for me"; "Wicked as it may be to say it, I know that, even in my guilt, I shall always be happy. I met the right man too late, but I am so young--I could not suffer all my life without him. Forgive me if you can." Had she--it was a horrible thought--had she been mistaken? Had she blundered more terribly than when she married? For, unless her prophecies of joy to the brim were fulfilled--unless her measure of thanksgiving overflowed--the blunder _was_ more terrible, infinitely more terrible: she was a gambler who had staked her soul, in her conviction of success.