"Yes, and that was unpleasant," Charter told her. "I didn't like the feel of that procurer's eyes, but what revolted me was Villiers himself. I took pains to learn his name the next day--that last day. There isn't a more unclean human package in New York.... It was so unlike you. I couldn't adjust the two. I couldn't be where he had been. I was sick with my own degradation. I went back to my garret." Selma Cross was crippled; she saw there was no lie in this. At what a price had been bought the restoration of faith for Paula Linster!... She had heard after their compact about Villiers' early days. There had been times when her fingers itched to tighten upon his scrawny throat. To have Quentin Charter hear this record was fire in her veins; it embraced the added horror that Stephen Cabot might also hear.... There was nothing further with which to charge the man before her. She nursed her wrath to keep from crying out. "Was it a man's way to give me no chance to explain?" she demanded. "Broadway knew Villiers." "I did not!" "Anyway, I couldn't get it straight in my mind, then," Charter said hastily. "You're no vulgar woman, mad after colors and dollars. You love your work too much to be one of those insatiable deserts of passion. Nor are you a creature of black evolution who prefers the soul, to the body of man, for a plaything.... You were all that was generous and normally fervent with me.... Let's cut the subject. It does not excuse me for not calling when I came to New York. You were nothing if not good to me." "Then Villiers paid to find out things about us," she said slowly. "He said you bragged about such matters to your friends." Charter shivered. "I fail to see how you troubled about a man not writing--if you could believe that about him." "I didn't see how he could know our places of meeting--any other way. I should never have seen him again, if he hadn't made me believe this of you." Charter scarcely heard her. The thought was inevitable now that the actress might have represented him to Skylark as one with the loathed habit of talking about women to his friends. The quick inclination to inquire could not overcome his distaste for mentioning a dear name in this room. The radiant, flashing spirit behind the letters did not belong here.... His brain ached with emptiness; he wondered continually how he could ever fill the spaces expanded by the Skylark's singing....