“By no means,” said Mason. “You have said that Mr. Van Bartan is not the man with whom you had hoped to spend your life. Who is that man?” The young woman looked down at the floor and was silent. “Well,” she said, “I don't know that I meant quite that. I was meaning, you know, that there were other considerations moving me to this alliance beyond mere affection. I did not say that I loved some one else, did I? Did I say I loved some one else?” “You evade,” said Mason, bluntly. “It is the weakling's method of confession, and as well the fool's method.” The blood came into the face of the younger Mrs. Van Bartan, and she looked up resolutely. “You don't spare me at all,” she said, bitterly. “You pry out everything, even the very heart linings. Suppose I did love some one else, what has that to do with this matter? That is all over and past and gone. Can't I permit it to sleep and be forgotten? Suppose there was another man? Suppose there is now? Must I empty out his heart too? Can't I spare him? Can't I leave him out of this?” “I am waiting, madam,” said Mason, quietly. The young woman passed her hand downward over her face, as though to remove something that was clinging to her. “If you must know,” she said slowly, “his name is Dalton, Robert Dalton, a member of the law firm of Carpenter, Lomax, & Dalton, of our city. He is said to be an able lawyer. He is the elder Mrs. Van Bartan's legal adviser, but I have no right to tell you all this. It is unjust to him. and unjust to me, and unfair to us all.” “And he still loves you?” said Mason, with the blunt indifference of a surgeon who thrusts his thumb into a wound. The young woman threw back her head. “You are brutal,” she cried, “to ask such a question, and I should be a fool, a miserable, contemptible fool if I should answer.” “But you have answered it, madam,” replied Randolph Mason. The younger Mrs. Van Bartan covered her face with her hands, and began to sob. The counsellor sat and watched her, as an expert might watch an intricate piece of machinery that he was testing. There was no emotion of any sort visible in his face--nothing at all, except the intense interest of the expert. Presently Mason leaned back in his chair. The result was evidently satisfactory. “Is this man married?” he asked. The woman did not answer. She simply pressed her hands tighter against her face. The counsellor waited for a few moments. Then he repeated: “Is this man married?” The woman's hands trembled violently. “No,” she sobbed, “and he never will be.” The lines in the face of Randolph Mason grew deep and resolute as one has seen the lines in the face of a great physician when, in some desperate case, he finally turned from the bedside of the patient in order to write the prescription upon which he had decided.