“I’ve told you before, he’s only a man,” she reminded him. “I shouldn’t be afraid.” Her direct gaze again challenged him, but Epes shook his head dejectedly. Suddenly she laid a hand over his. “I didn’t tear that picture up,” she whispered. Then with a sweep of her arm she finished what had been in her glass, and rose. “Come on, he’s still in the office.” Epes Calef urged her in careful tones not to be a donkey; he tried, here discreetly, to restrain her; but she went resolutely on, through the front room into the hall. There would be a frightful row, but he couldn’t desert Sumatra. However, in the passage she paused, with her lips against his ear. “Remember, better than the _Triton_, or it would kill me.” Ira Calef looked up from his table, frowning slightly as she entered the office, followed by Epes. The elder’s face was as white as marble under the artificial light. “Why, Sumatra,” he greeted her easily. Epes tried to step between her and his father--disaster--but she held him back, speaking immediately in a voice as level as, but a little faster than, Ira Calef’s. “I suppose you think it’s strange to see me here, so late, with Epes; but it is stranger even than you imagine.” She put a hand over Epes Calef’s mouth. “No,” she protested, “you promised to let me speak. Mr. Calef,” said the incredible Sumatra, “perhaps I ought to apologize to Mrs. Calef and you--Epes and I are married.” Epes’ amazement, which he barely restrained, was no greater than his father’s, but the latter’s was given, for him, full expression. “Married!” he repeated in a voice slightly and significantly louder than usual. “Why, that is outrageous! Nothing, nothing at all was said to me. My plan was wholly different.” He rose, beyond the table, with one hand resting beside a paper weight of greenish glass. Epes’ eyes fastened upon this. “It was, as you might guess, in a hurry,” Sumatra went on; “we decided only today. You must remember that I am as much a Balavan as Annice, and I suit Epes far better; I understand and agree with his ambition.” The man’s manner was colder than the night. “What ambition?” he demanded. “To go to sea, of course.” “Epes isn’t going to sea,” he instructed her. “He wasn’t, as your son,” she corrected him; “but married to me, yes.” “No,” Ira Calef answered in a restrained, bitter temper that yet had the effect of a shout. “But he is,” Sumatra Balavan retorted. “He is, and now you can’t stop him. It doesn’t matter what you want, I won’t have a husband fastened like a sponge to the earth, and as soft as a sponge.” Her anger, equal with Ira Calef’s, rose. The room grew quiet. Epes’ attention was still concentrated on the heavy rectangle of glass close by his father’s hand. With a sensation like an enveloping breath of winter air he saw the other’s fingers reach out and close about the paper weight. He hadn’t a second to spare; but Sumatra, too, had seen the instinctive movement on the table.