He was never too amiable in dealing with his clients, because he had found that, in self-protection, to avoid being misunderstood and largely increasing the difficulties of amicable intercourse, he must keep the feel of iron very near the surface. That day he was for the first time irascible. If the business his clients were engaged in had been less perilous and his acute intelligence not indispensable, he would have cost the firm dear. But in business circles, where every consideration yields to that of material gain, the man with the brain may conduct himself as he pleases--and usually does so, when he has strength of character. All afternoon he wrestled with himself to keep away from the office. He won, but it was the sort of victory that gives the winner the chagrin and despondency of defeat. At home, late in the afternoon, he found Josephine in the doorway, just leaving. "You'll walk home with me--won't you?" she said. And, taken unawares and intimidated by guilt, he could think of no excuse. Some one--probably a Frenchman--has said that there are always in a man's life three women--the one on the way out, the one that is, and the one that is to be. Norman--ever the industrious trafficker with the feminine that the man of the intense vitality necessary to a great career of action is apt to be--was by no means new to the situation in which he now found himself. But never before had the circumstances been so difficult. Josephine in no way resembled any woman with whom he had been involved; she was the first he had taken seriously. Nor did the other woman resemble the central figure in any of his affairs. He did not know what she was like, how to classify her; but he did know that she was unlike any woman he had ever known and that his feeling for her was different--appallingly different--from any emotion any other woman had inspired in him. So--a walk alone with Josephine--a first talk with her after his secret treachery--was no light matter. "Deeper and deeper," he said to himself. "Where is this going to end?" She began by sympathizing with him for having so much to do--"and father says you can get through more work than any man he ever knew, not excluding himself." She was full of tenderness and compliment, of a kind of love that made him feel as the dirt beneath his feet. She respected him so highly; she believed in him so entirely. The thought of her discovering the truth, or any part of it, gave him a sensation of nausea. He was watching her out of the corner of his eye. Never had he seen her more statelily beautiful. If he should lose her! "I'm mad--_mad_!" he said to himself. "Josephine is as high above her as heaven above earth. What is there to her, anyhow? Not brains--nor taste--nor such miraculous beauty. Why do I make an ass of myself about her? I ought to go to my doctor." "I don't believe you're listening to what I'm saying," laughed Josephine. "My head's in a terrible state," replied he. "I can't think of anything."