A faint light crept into Violet Wayne’s eyes, and Tony knew he had gone far enough. “The one thing I resent is that it apparently sets you thinking,” she said. “I can’t be satisfied with less than I offer you, Tony, and the man who loves me must believe in me implicitly. I did not get angry when you would not share your troubles with me.” Tony softened. “I’m sorry, Violet, but the fact is I don’t feel very pleased about anything to‐night. Nobody could expect it!” “Is it Davidson’s death that is troubling you?” She looked at him with a curious intentness, for Tony’s face was haggard, and a horrible fear came upon the man as she did so. Her gaze disconcerted him, and he fancied he saw suspicion in it. Accordingly he clutched at the first excuse that presented itself. “Not altogether! It’s Bernard,” he said. Another irretrievable step was taken. Tony had waited as usual for events, instead of choosing a path to be adhered to in spite of them. As the result he was forced into one by which he had not meant to go, and it led rapidly down hill. Violet Wayne, however, straightened herself a trifle in her chair. “Tony,” she said, “it is quite impossible that you should think what your words suggest.” The man’s face flushed, for her quiet assurance stirred the bitterness of jealousy that had hitherto lain dormant in him, and again he answered without reflection, eager only to justify himself. “When a man borrows money, and goes out at night to meet another who may have been blackmailing him, and then disappears when that man is found dead with marks of violence on him, what would anybody think?” he said. “Blackmailing him!” said Violet Wayne, and then sat very still a moment while the blood crept into her pale cheek, for the meaning of one or two vague allusions she had heard concerning Lucy Davidson flashed upon her. “It slipped out. Of course, I should not have mentioned it to you.” “You have done so, but the thing is so utterly hateful that it carries its refutation with it”; and there was a portentous sparkle in the girl’s eyes as she fixed them upon him. Tony saw it, and trembled inwardly. He had been favored with glimpses of Violet Wayne’s inner self before, and could discern the difference between a becoming prudery and actual abhorrence. “Still,” he said slowly, realizing that he was committed, “he disappeared. Of course, the affair may not be as black as it looks, and perhaps he was driven into it. Men with really good intentions are forced into doing what they never meant to now and then.” Violet Wayne laughed a little scornful laugh. “Isn’t the cowardice which leads a man into meanness he is ashamed of more contemptible than bold iniquity?” “Well,” said Tony, “I don’t quite know. I don’t worry over those questions, but it seems to me there is something to be said for the man who does what he shouldn’t when he can’t help it.” “Can’t help it?”