"If it's done and can't be undone," he said cheerfully, "I don't see that advice is needed." "But--you don't understand." She seemed to be casting about for words. "As I said, it was last fall--here. In Saint X there was a man--and he and I--we'd cared for each other ever since we were children. And then he went away to college. He did several things father didn't like. You know how older people are--they don't make allowances. And though father's the gentlest, best--at any rate, he turned against Jack, and--" Scarborough abruptly went to the window and stood with his back to her. After a pause Pauline said, in a rush, "And he came here last fall and we got married." There was a long silence. "It was DREADFUL, wasn't it?" she said in the tone of one who has just made a shocking discovery. Scarborough did not answer. "I never realized till this minute," she went on after a while. "Not that I'm sorry or that I don't--don't CARE--just as I always did. But somehow, telling it out loud to some one else has made me see it in a different light. It didn't seem like treachery to them--to father and mother--then. It hasn't seemed like a--a marriage REALLY marriage--until now." Another long silence. Then she burst out appealingly: "Oh, I don't see how I'm ever going to tell them!" Scarborough came back to his chair and seated himself. His face was curiously white. It was in an unnatural voice that he said: "How old is he?" "Twenty-five," she replied, then instantly flared up, as if he had attacked Dumont: "But it wasn't his fault--not in the least. I knew what I was doing--and I wanted to do it. You mustn't get a false impression of him, Hampden. You'd admire and respect him. You--any one--would have done as he did in the same circumstances." She blushed slightly. "You and he are ever so much alike--even in looks. It was that that made me tell you, that made me like you as I have--and trust you." Scarborough winced. Presently he began: "Yet you regret----" "No--no!" she protested--too vehemently. "I do NOT regret marrying him. That was certain to be sooner or later. All I regret is that I did something that seems underhanded. Perhaps I'm really only sorry I didn't tell them as soon as I'd done it." She waited until she saw he was not going to speak. "And now," she said, "I don't know HOW to tell them." Again she waited, but he did not speak, continued to look steadily out into the sky. "What do you think?" she asked nervously. "But I can see without your saying. Only I--wish you'd SAY it."