"We have settled it, I think; Maxwell will do all he can. It seems hard to trust so much to a stranger like Sir George Tressady, but if he will go--if Ancoats likes him? We must do the best, mustn't we?" She raised to him her delicate, small face, in a most winning dependence. Fontenoy did not even attempt resistance. "Certainly--it is not a chance to lose. May I suggest also"--he looked at Maxwell--"that there is no time to lose?" "Give me ten minutes, and I am off," said Maxwell, hurriedly carrying a bundle of unopened letters to a distance. He looked through them, to see if anything especially urgent required him to give instructions to his secretary before leaving the house. "Shall I take you home?" said Fontenoy to Mrs. Allison. She drew her thick veil round her head and face, and said some tremulous words, which unconsciously deepened the gloom on Fontenoy's face. Apparently they were to the effect that before going home she wished to see the Anglican priest in whom she especially confided, a certain Father White, who was to all intents and purposes her director. For in his courtship of this woman of fifty, with her curious distinction and her ethereal charm, which years seemed only to increase, Fontenoy had not one rival, but two--her son and her religion. Fontenoy's fingers barely touched those of Maxwell and his wife. As he closed the door behind Mrs. Allison, leaving the two together, he said to himself contemptuously that he pitied the husband. When the latch had settled, Maxwell threw down his letters and crossed the room to his wife. "I only half understood you," he said, a flush rising in his face. "You really mean that we, on this day of all days--that I--am to personally ask this kindness of George Tressady?" "I do!" she cried, but without attempting any caress. "If I could only go and ask it myself!" "That would be impossible!" he said quickly. "Then you, dear husband--dear love!--go and ask it for me! Must we not--oh! do see it as I do!--must we not somehow make it possible to be friends again, to wipe out that--that half-hour once for all?"--she threw out her hand in an impetuous gesture. "If you go, he will feel that is what we mean--he will understand us at once--there is nothing vile in him--nothing! Dear, he never said a word to me I could resent till this morning. And, alack, alack! was it somehow my fault?" She dropped her face a moment on the back of the chair she held. "How I am to play my own part--well! I must think. But I cannot have such a thing on my heart, Aldous--I cannot!" He was silent a moment; then he said: "Let me understand, at least, what it is precisely that we are doing. Is the idea that it should be made possible for us all to meet again as though nothing had happened?" She shrank a moment from the man's common sense; then replied, controlling herself: