"He isn't, indeed! But, anyhow, he let her keep the things--and wear them, too; even if she never had the real ones. He receives her at the house when I'm out--when he pretends to be shut up with a cold. It must have been arranged that she should come then, and Togo bribed to let her in. Oh, it's all nearly as bad as it can be, if not _quite_! Pat doesn't deserve that his mind should be eased as it must have been when he saw at the last minute that I was wearing the horrid false beads last night. He'd been in such a state, for fear I'd 'make a scandal!' When he saw the rope on my neck, and heard me calmly accepting compliments on it, I suppose he thought, 'That settles _that_. She can't accuse dear Lyda now!' But he forgets. I can find proof enough to divorce him, without bringing up a question of the pearls at all." "Is that what you intend to do?" asked Jack. Juliet threw out her hands in a gesture of feverish weariness. "I don't know what I intend," she sighed, hopelessly, "I wish I could just _die_. Then maybe Pat would be sorry." "That's what you used to say about your family when you were a kid. No doubt Pat would be sorry if you died. But wouldn't _you_ be sorry--when you'd divorced him?" "I don't care whether I'm sorry or not," cried Juliet. "I'm too miserable now to care about how I may feel then." "That's the state of mind for jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire," said Jack. "Listen, my kid, did you come here to me to ask my advice?" "Yes, partly. Though I wouldn't promise to take it if it was anything I didn't like. But mostly I came for something else." "What?" "To beg you to _help_ me. Help's better than advice." "You ought to know I'll help you, in any way I jolly well can----" "In _any_ way?" she caught him up. Jack was slightly startled, knowing Juliet as he did know her: impulsive, even unscrupulous, if a thing passionately wished for were to be obtained--like all spoiled young women, to whom life has refused nothing. "Why not out with it at once, and not beat round the bush?" he asked. "You've some special thing in your mind----" "I have," she cut him short. "But, truly, Jack, I hadn't when I came. I was just going to ask for your advice and help, mixed up together. You were to advise me what to do; and then if I wanted to do it, you were to help get it done. I've no one except you to depend on, and you were my only hope--if I had any hope left--of making things somehow work out right in the end. It's you yourself who has given me the real idea--the inspiration: the thing to be done. And if you are the one person on earth who can do it, the question is--will you?" "I can't suppose a 'question,'" Manners said, "if the thing is a thing that will _really_ help you." "It will--it will, more than _anything_ else. But you might think it--_caddish_." "You wouldn't ask me to do it, I'm sure, if it were caddish."