"What are you doing?" Captain Polkington cried, seizing her hands as she would have torn it again. "Don't you know it is valuable? I must keep it; he can't go back on it if he wants to." He took it from her, and began to piece it together. "I can look the world in the face again," he said, admiring the fragments. "I am free, free and cleared; that debt would have hung like a millstone around my neck, but I am free of it; it is cancelled." "Free!" Julia said with scorn. There are disadvantages in reducing a man to a subordinate position and allowing him no use for his self-respect; it is a virtue that has a tendency to atrophy. Julia recognised this with something like personal shame. "Your debt is discharged," she said gently, "but mine is not; it has been shifted, not cancelled; it lies with me and Mr. Rawson-Clew now, and it shall be paid somehow." Captain Polkington hardly heeded what she said; he was still smoothing the pieces of paper. "What?" he asked, as he put them away in an envelope, but he did not wait for her answer. "It was very heedless of you to tear it," he said; "but fortunately there is no damage done; it is perfectly valid, all that can be required." CHAPTER III NARCISSUS TRIANDRUS AZUREUM The _elite_ called to congratulate Mrs. Polkington on her daughter's engagement. All manner of pleasant things were said by them and by Mrs. Polkington in an atmosphere of social sunshine. She thought it so nice of them to come so soon, she told them so severally; she knew that they--"you all," "you, at least," "you, my oldest friend," according to circumstances--would be pleased to hear about it. She gave sundry little hints of future plans and hopes, among other things mentioned that it really was hard for poor Violet to have to go and cheer an invalid cousin just now. "And the worst of it is," so Mrs. Polkington said, "she may have to be away some time. There really seems no one else to go, and one could not leave the poor dear alone at this dull time of the year; and, after all, Bath is not very far off; some of Richard's people live there, too. I should not be surprised if the young people contrive to see a good deal of each other in spite of everything. Indeed, had I not thought so, I think I should have insisted on Cherie's going instead of Violet, although she would have had to give up her winter abroad." Here the visitor usually made polite inquiries about this same winter abroad, and heard of a delightful prospect of several months to be spent in the south of France, unnecessary and unpleasant details all omitted.