And this game of make-believe--which only good breeding enabled them to play--endured all through the dinner of which those four partook (Mrs. Sanderson and the hospital-nurse mealed alone) in the paneled room whose heavy gold-framed pictures looked down across vast spaces on the pale oval pool of the candle-lit dining table. But Ronnie, even taking part in the game, seemed distrait, self-absorbed. Dinner finished and the sisters gone, he poured himself a second glass of port; and, extracting a piece of carefully-clipped newsprint from his waistcoat-pocket, handed it across the table. "Tell me," he said, "of whom does this remind you?" James Wilberforce took the proffered paper and scrutinized it carefully before replying: "Well--it's a little like----" "Like Aliette." Ronnie's self-absorption passed in a flash. "My dear chap, it's the very image of her. Look at those eyes, that mouth. I tell you I got the shock of my life when I opened the 'Evening News' on my way down to-night." "Really--and who is the lady? Lucy Towers, eh! Screen-star, I suppose." "Screen-star, you blithering idiot; she's just been arrested for murder." "By Jove!" Jimmy, whose wits had been wool-gathering, skimmed through the paragraph underneath the photo, and handed it back without further comment. His friend's excitement over the vague resemblance to Aliette--for that Ronnie was excited, quite uncontrollably excited, even the love-lorn solicitor could now see--appeared, to say the least of it, peculiar. "Jimmy," went on the barrister, his eyes shining, "I'll swear that woman's no murderess." "You'd better offer to defend her then." "Wouldn't I like the chance! Look here,"--another newspaper-cutting emerged from Ronnie's pocket,--"that's the chap she's alleged to have murdered. Her husband, apparently. A nice-looking blackguard, too. As far as I can make out, there's another person under arrest for complicity. A man----" "_Crime passionel_, eh?" "Possibly." Ronnie folded up both the cuttings and put them carefully back into his pocket. "And from the look of the late Mr. Towers, I can't say they're either of them much to blame." He relapsed into silence; and James Wilberforce realized, in a rare flash of psychological illumination, whither the chance remark had led his excited imagination. "Talking of murder," he said suddenly. "What would happen if I were to put a bullet into H. B.? There's been many a time when I've wanted to. It makes me mad to feel that that man, or any man, has the power to deny a woman her freedom. It's sheer slavery--our marriage system." "What the dickens is the matter with you to-night?" James Wilberforce had risen, and placed a restraining hand on his friend's shoulder.