A silence fell between them. The physician took out a cigarette from his gold case with trembling ringers. "I'm a little giddy, Rachael," he said after a moment. "I--on my honor I don't know what's happened to me! You're the most wonderful woman in the world--I've always thought that--but it never occurred to me--the possibility--" He paused, confused, unable to find the right words. "You've been facing this all alone," he continued presently. "Poor Rachael! You've been splendid--wonderfully brave! You have me beside you now; I'll help you if I may. Some day we may find a way out! Well," he finished abruptly, "suppose I go up and see Clarence?" For answer she rose, and without speaking again went ahead of him up the stairway and left him at the door of her husband's room. He did not see her again that night. Half an hour later he came down, dismissed his car, and walked home under the spring stars. In his veins, like a fire, still ran the excited, glorious consciousness of his madness. In his ears still echoed the wonderful golden voice; he could hear her very words, and he took certain phrases from his memory, and gloated over them as another man might have gloated over strings of pearls: "I'd like to be far away from cities and people, a fisherman's wife on an ocean shore with a baby coming every year and just the delicious sea to watch!" "Greg--don't frighten me!" Exquisite, desirable, enchanting--every inch of her--her voice, her eyes, her slender hand with its gold circle. What a woman! What a wife! What radiant youth and beauty and charm--and all trampled in the mire by Clarence Breckenridge, of all insensate brutes! How could laughter and courage and beauty survive it? He was going to the club, a mile away from the Breckenridge house, but long before the visions born that evening were exhausted, he saw the familiar lights, and the awninged porches, and heard the faint echoes of the orchestra. They were dancing. Warren Gregory turned away again, and plunged into the darkness of the roadside afresh. "My dear Don Quixote!" With what a look of motherly amusement and tenderness she had said it. What a woman! He had never kissed her. He had never even thought of kissing Clarence Breckenridge's wife.