"He is on the way to New York and will be at the _Granville_ to-morrow afternoon, where he hopes to find a note saying he may call here to-morrow night. There shall be no note from me----" "But did you write to him, Paula?" the actress asked strangely excited. "Yes--a little after you left me the other morning. It was silly of me. Oh, but I did not tell him what I had heard--or who told me!... Finish your supper--you must go." "And how did you learn of his coming?" "He telegraphed me to-day. That's why I bothered you at your supper----" "What a dramatic situation--if you decided to see him!" Selma Cross said intensely. "And to think--that to-morrow is Sunday night and I don't work!" Paula felt brutalized by the change in the other's manner. "I have decided not to see him," she repeated, and left the apartment. TWELFTH CHAPTER CERTAIN ELEMENTS FOR THE CHARTER CRUCIBLE, AND HIS MOTHER'S PILGRIMAGE ACROSS THE SANDS ALONE TO MECCA Charter had come a long way very swiftly in his search for realities. If it is required of man, at a certain stage of evolution, to possess a working knowledge of the majority of possible human experiences, in order to choose wisely between good and evil, Charter had, indeed, covered much ground in his thirty-three years. As a matter of fact, there were few degrees in the masonry of sensation, into which he had not been initiated. His was the name of a race of wild, sensual, physical types; a name still held high in old-world authority, and identified with men of heavy hunting, heavy dining and drinking. The Charters had always been admired for high temper and fair women. True, there was not a germ of the present Charter mental capacity in the whole race of such men commonly mated, but Quentin's father had married a woman with a marvellous endurance in prayer--that old, dull-looking formula for producing sons of strength. A silent woman, she was, a reverent woman, an angry woman, with the stuff of martyrdoms in her veins.