But although she hesitated to acknowledge it, she was tired of her waiting game, she wished that “fate would get a move on”, and she had left her husband once with unforeseen results. She leaned her elbows on her knees and pressed her hands against her face. She had always cherished a high opinion of her cleverness in regard to men, but she was nonplussed. For a woman of her resource there should be some alternative to waiting. She knew that she had made a deep impression on her husband in that momentous interview, but who could say that he had not deliberately put the memory of it out of his mind? Certainly there was no sign that it had softened him or paved the way for her reinstatement into his life. She was alarmed at her waning self-control. During these last few days she barely had been able to play her part in society; the people at the various functions she had attended had seemed to her confused and absent mind like marionettes that she could sweep off the stage with her arm, and she had retreated into her shell lest she insult them irreparably. She brought her heavy brows together. Could there be another woman after all? Gregory was cleverer than any detective. Why should it occur to him to suggest divorce, he a man so absorbed in a mine that he had forgotten how to live--merely out of consideration for a discarded wife whose existence he generally managed to forget? It was certainly odd, and its idiosyncrasies grew and swelled as she brooded. She wondered if she had been a fool. But who in heaven’s name could the woman be? Of course it was only a passing fancy, but could she wait, _could she wait_? She was aroused by a slight cough, discreet but full of subtle insolence. She sprang to her feet, and Whalen smiled as he saw her drawn face and bloodshot eyes. He stood just within the door, and held a cap in his hand. He wore a light automobile coat; a pair of goggles only half covered his bulging brow. His upper teeth were clamped down over his lower lip, a habit when steadying his nerves. Ida thought she had never seen him look so hideous, so like a mongrel cur. “What do you want?” she asked. “How gracious you are! How like Mrs. Blake, who would not forget her manners if she----” “I’ve got no manners for your sort. Get out.” “Oh, not yet. I’ve something to say. I’ve waited for over a year, but my time has come----” “You’ll go out the way you went last time if you don’t say what you’ve got to say pretty quick and get out by yourself.” Whalen looked over his shoulder nervously, and measured the distance to the front door. He had asked leave of the maid to announce himself, and, when she had disappeared, reopened the door and left it ajar.