All progress was temporarily arrested; then the older woman puffed out her chest and waddled away with all the dignity at her summons. But she could not resist the Parthian shot--what Celt can!--and she turned to throw back over her shoulder, "Who's your girl-friend, Georgia?" Her teeth clicked and she continued her departure. Stevens realized that there had been a contretemps of some sort and that it was his place, as a man of the world, to laugh it off. "Who's the old pouter pigeon?" he inquired. "Mama." "Oh!" Feeling that candor was now thrust upon her, Georgia proceeded to explain to Stevens that she had never explained about him to her mother, for mama couldn't possibly understand, being old-fashioned and prejudiced in some regards. "So you've made me fib for you," she finished. "Aren't you ashamed!" "Yes," said he, in truth much gratified by her clandestineness. "But what I don't see is----," he began, then broke off. "Is what?" "Is why you should be so disturbed about your _mother's_ knowing." "I've told you--for the sake of peace and a quiet life." "But what about your husband?" He blurted it out suddenly, the word which had crucified him since his one and only visit to her home; the word which he had kept dumb between them until now. "What about him? Doesn't he mind?" "He left me six months ago. You never supposed I would take a man's bread and--fool him, did you, Mason?" She called him by his name for the first time. "I didn't know," he muttered, "I've been to hell and back thinking of it." "How did you suppose it would come out?" she asked, fascinated objectively by the drama of her life. "I felt we were playing bean-bag with dynamite--and we ought to quit--made up my mind--while I was waiting for you this morning to tell you this must be the last time, because we were drifting straight into----" He paused. "Into what?" There was a touch of gentlest irony in her tone. "Into trouble, lots of it." There was a touch of apology in his. "And you didn't want trouble, lots of it?" Her irony was not less. "At least not on my account?" "I was thinking of what would be best for all of us. I was trying to do the square thing--the greatest happiness for the greatest number." There was a pause, unsympathetic. "Wasn't that right?" he ended with no great confidence. "Why, of course, perfectly right," she assented heartily. "It shows consideration. You considered the case systematically from all sides. Yours, and mine, and my husband's, and the rest of the family's, and the rest of yours, too, I suppose, didn't you?" She looked extremely efficient and spoke in her business voice with a little snap to her words. She was quite unfair in taking this tack with unhappy Stevens, who, however often he thought of his duty in these twisted premises, would surely not have done it if she beckoned him away. For she owned the only two hands in the world which he wanted to hold.