"Thank you. But some of my clients stipulate that no third person shall be present when their business is discussed." "All right," he said, shortly. The faint warmth of their morning's _rapprochement_ seemed somehow to have turned colder, now that they were about to separate for the day. Both felt it; neither understood it. But the constraint which perhaps they thought too indefinite to analyse persisted. She did not fully understand it, except that, in the aftermath of the storm which had nigh devastated her young heart, her physical nearness to him seemed to help the tiny seed of faith which she had replanted in agony and tears the night before. To see him, hear his voice, somehow aided her; and the charm of his personality for a while had reawakened and encouraged in her the courage to love him. The winning smile in his eyes had, for the time, laid the phantoms of doubt; memory had become less sensitive; the demon of distrust which she had fought off so gallantly lay somewhere inert and almost forgotten in the dim chamber of her mind. But not dead--no; for somewhere in obscurity she had been conscious for an instant that her enemy was stirring. Must this always be so? Was faith in this man really dead? Was it only the image of faith which her loyalty and courage had set up once more for an altar amid the ruins of her young heart? And always, always, even when she seemed unaware, even when she had unconsciously deceived herself, her consciousness of the _other woman_ remained alive, like a spark, whitened at moments by its own ashes, yet burning terribly when touched. Slowly she began to understand that her supposed new belief in this man would endure only while he was within her sight; that the morning's warmth had slowly chilled as the hour of their separation approached; that her mind was becoming troubled and confused, and her heart uncertain and apprehensive. And as she thought of the future--years and years of it--there seemed no rest for her, only endless effort and strife, only the external exercise of mental and spiritual courage to fight back the creeping shadow which must always threaten her--the shadow that Doubt casts, and which men call Fear. "Shall we go to town in the car?" he said, looking at his watch. "We have time; the train won't be in for twenty minutes." "If you like." He picked up the speaking tube and gave his orders, then lay back again to watch the familiar landscape with worried eyes that saw other things than hills and trees and wintry fields and the meaningless abodes of men. So this was what Fate had done to him--_this_! And every unconsidered act of his had been slyly, blandly, maliciously leading him into this valley of humiliation.