"Well, what should she say? Could you expect a girl on her wedding day to become the harassed mother of three children not her own?" Dibdin jumped from his chair, ground an oath between his teeth and his forehead was a file of wrinkles. "Listen, Randolph," he began in another voice. "It’s damnably tough, and I know it. But you can’t, you simply can’t disperse your sister’s children to God knows where. You are the only relation they’ve got. Put yourself in their place. It would be damnation. If you need—more money," he stammered in confusion, "why, dash it—I’m an old enough friend of yours to—to advance you some, eh?" And he laughed raucously, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "You are a good sort—of tramp," I grinned sheepishly, seizing his hand. "But it isn’t that. I don’t know as yet what Laura left them. But it isn’t that. I feel like—like hell about it—but what can I do—what with Gertrude and—and everything else. Oh, it’s the easiest thing in the world, I assure you.—But I wish to God I could see my way to keeping them!" "Easy or not," said Dibdin huskily, "if you send those children away, I’ll break every bone in your body." I laughed almost hysterically. I know Dibdin. When he is most moved and most sympathetic, he is at his most violent. "Don’t go," I clung to him as with sunken head he shouldered toward the door. "Must," he growled. "I’ve got to think, too." "I wish you had married, Dibdin, and had children of your own," I all but whispered with my hand on his shoulder. "And I’m sorry for the woman. You’re a good devil, Dibdin. I wish I knew who the woman is." "I’ll tell you," murmured Dibdin, with a queer throatiness of tone. "I’ll tell you who she was. It can’t matter now. She was—No, by God! I can’t—not now!" And he shuffled out, leaving me gazing after him speechless and open-mouthed. *CHAPTER V* The girl Alicia keeps watching me like some bewildered household animal dimly aware of the breaking up of its household. Always I am conscious of her great eyes upon me. To her, I presume, I am a Setebos who can inflict pain and torture, like Death himself; who can disrupt her little world of clinging affections by the merest movement of my hand. I am in that process of turning things over to which Gertrude has indulgently consigned me and I am if anything farther away from a decision than I was twenty-four hours ago. I finger my books and open at random a volume of Florio’s "Montaigne" in an edition that is as fragrant of good ink and paper as the Tudor English is rich, and the first line that falls under my eye is that of Seneca, "_He that lives not somewhat to others, liveth little to himself._" Does this mean that my long absorption in my own small concerns has made me incapable of decision in anything of importance—that I live too little?