“Just a moment, Miss Adair. I do not think we should be weak, any of us; it is the ideal to be granite shafts of principle, but the sweeter and truer the woman, the harder for her to resist the sort of plea made you. I can see that it was hard; if it had not cost you pain to yield you would not be confessing your misstep to me now. I must forgive it, Miss Adair; it was a hard pull, and I’ll credit you with resistance. It has not harmed me, you’ll be glad to know. I wondered, rather, why there were noticeable sales of that stock on a recent date; your lover must have had considerable to invest in it. That chapter is closed; put it out of your mind. Now, my child, you were sent me by my brother, as a friend, in a sense, of my niece Jeanette’s, and I have a greater interest in you than that of a mere employer. Will you let me express it in a question? You have spoken of your engagement, your marriage, in the past tense. Are you not still engaged, still to be married at Christmas?” Mr. Lucas asked his question gently, pity in his eyes. “No, sir; it’s all over,” said Cis. “Not because of this franchise matter? You’re not a morbid girl to do penance, and punish a man for a thing of that sort?” cried Mr. Lucas. “No, Mr. Lucas,” said Cis. “Rod was married; I could not marry him. He was splendid; he told me about it. He was not going to tell me, but I love everything straight so much that after all he told me. And then we could not be married, you see. It was splendid; Rod was good, but still I could not go on with it.” “Go on with it? Rod was splendid, you say? To tell you, to _tell_ you he was married, after he had entrapped you into an engagement, into loving him as I see you loved him? Well, hardly splendid! He did stop short of crime, but to stop on the edge of bigamy, and to make a girl like you suffer! I’d hardly call that splendid!” cried Mr. Lucas fiercely. “Bigamy?” repeated Cis. “Well, I don’t believe they call it that, but of course it is, if you stop to think. I hadn’t thought about it just that way. Rod was divorced; his wife was worse than dead, but she wasn’t dead. I suppose it is bigamy.” The word seemed to hold a horrid fascination for Cis. Mr. Lucas fell back in his chair and stared at Cis, trying to get his bearings. “Divorced?” he echoed. “Oh, but, my girl, that’s another matter! Of course remarriage is not bigamy when the state has freed a man. Then he has no wife, so his marriage to a second one is not bigamy; it is as if the first one were dead.” Cis shook her head. “No, Mr. Lucas,” she said, “it really isn’t; how could it be? Suppose I were walking with Rod, had married him, and we met his first wife. It wouldn’t be the same as if she were dead, would it? There’d be two of us, both alive. How do you suppose I’d feel; how would any decent girl feel? Besides, Mr. Lucas, Rod was married by a priest, and no one can break those marriages. I’d have had to give up God to marry Rod, and how could I?”