"He made us such extravagant promises. A house in the West End, motors--every luxury. I really thought he was quite serious when I left Ragusa. Sir Jules Achon did not wish us to go. He knows these people; he thought I was ill-advised to give up Yonkers for such vague promises. I wish I had listened to him now; he is still on those delightful waters, far away from all this. We should have been with him but for our foolish generosity." Gabrielle avoided the difficult subject. She must have been a little ashamed of it when she remembered the gifts John Faber had lavished upon them already and the concern he displayed for Maryska. The conversation, indeed, carried her back to a somewhat commonplace reality from which she had emerged to win this temporary triumph as a ministering angel in the East End. And now they had burned her Temple and the idol was cast down. Her father would send Maryska away, and they must return to the old humdrum life. John Faber and his riches would pass as a ship of the night. Harry Lassett and the dead leaves of a withered passion remained. "Oh," she said at last, "how vain is all we do! How vain, how hopeless! We are just like ants crawling about the earth and trying to set ourselves up for gods. We talk of peace and war, of good and evil, of what we shall accomplish and what we have done, and then down comes the great flat foot of circumstance and out we go. I lose the power even to hope sometimes. Why should we not let things drift? Who is the better for our work?" Her father would not agree to that. "Every stone cast into the lake of the world's ills is an asset in humanity's balance sheet," he said. "You have cast many, Gabrielle, and will add to the number. Look out there at those poor people. Is it all vain when you remember how many of their kind you have succoured? This American hardness is no good influence; I wish we could shake it off forever. Indeed, it were better so." "We shall do that," she said quietly. "Mr. Faber will not be many days in England when the frost will let him get away."