"You have read it," he said huskily, "and you value your wife's reputation?" "Yes, beyond anything and everything else." "Beyond the Consolidated Companies and the gratification of injuring me with the committee?" "Yes." Covington gained confidence from the ease with which all was moving. A few minutes more of this as against a lifetime of wealth and power! It was worth the degradation. "It is sometimes necessary to walk through filth and slime to attain high places," he remembered Gorham had once told him. "Would you agree to stand one side and give me this chance, rather than have a blemish on your wife's name made public?" "Yes," was the firm reply. Eleanor had lived a century during the conversation. Sitting now in the shadow of the room, she turned her eyes first toward one speaker and then the other, wondering all the while how it was to end. If only she had told Robert herself before this moment! She could not understand her husband's passive attitude. She knew him to be slow to anger, yet she also knew well the strength of the passion which lay controlled beneath his calm exterior. What Covington had said and the manner in which he had said it would, under ordinary circumstances, have aroused Gorham to stern indignation. She could only attribute his present patience to an uncertainty which lay in his own mind as to the truth of the story which he had read; but when he answered Covington's questions, indicating which choice he would make, she could endure it no longer. Rising quickly, she stood between the two men, her face turned toward Gorham. "Robert," she said, "what do you mean? This man is asking you to give up the Consolidated Companies." "I understand it, Eleanor," Gorham replied. "I would prefer to do so rather than have a single breath of scandal or even suspicion attach itself to you." Eleanor drew herself up very straight, and, paying no attention to Covington, she addressed herself passionately to her husband. "Look at me, Robert, look into my eyes, and tell me if you see there anything of which I need to feel ashamed. You have read this story, now you shall hear mine. It is one which you should have heard long ago, Robert, but I hesitated to speak, not because I was ashamed of anything which happened, but because I feared just the interpretation which has now been put upon it. You know all about my marriage to Ralph Buckner; you know all about Carina's death, and you shall know all which I am able to tell any one, or which I myself know, of what happened during the awful days which followed." Eleanor's voice trembled, but the excitement of the moment kept her from breaking down.