"I've got to know the truth!" he groaned. "I think I could make myself forgive her anything, but the deceit of it is driving me mad! What could have taken her to that place--what is she hiding from me? Her reason for wanting the thousand dollars--perhaps, that too, was a lie." It suddenly dawned upon him how little he knew of Helen's life; nothing more than she had been pleased to tell him, and that had not been much. She had seldom spoken of her family, and then only in a hazy, unenlightening sort of way. He had rather got the impression that her parents had died when she was a child, and that a shadowy, indefinite aunt had reared her. Gilmore's love for his wife had been so blindly intense, so headlong that it had never occurred to him to weigh these things. He had loved her for herself, and that had been sufficient. Until long past noon he remained locked within the studio, and no one came to disturb him. At last he could no longer endure the oppression of four walls; the day was hot, and he had neglected to open the windows; the air was stifling. So he flung himself out of the renovated stable and plunged, with hardly any sense of direction, across the open country--trying to think, trying to think! Thus he missed the arrival of Victor Sarbella, his artist guest; in fact he had forgotten that Sarbella was coming. It was a quarter past four when one of the village taxis turned in at Greenacres, nosed along the driveway and, coming to a stop beneath the portico, deposited Victor Sarbella and his bags beside the long, cool porch. One did not need to hear the name to be certain of Sarbella's Italian blood, for from his Florentine father he had got the intense black eyes and the tinting of skin which belong to that warm-blooded race. He was a handsome, powerfully built man, nearing forty. His hands, as he paid the driver, were revealed as long-fingered, tapering, such hands as properly belong to the artist. With a honk of the horn the taxi moved off, and Victor Sarbella looked about him, his black eyes snapping with an appreciative light. The artist in him was delighted with the charm of Greenacres. "My friend," he mused, "has a most beautiful home; a beautiful wife, too, I am told." Attracted by the taxi's arrival, Bates, the butler, shambled out across the porch, followed by Joan Sheridan. Joan had met him at a literary affair in New York the previous winter, and of course she remembered him; Victor Sarbella was not the kind of man that one found it possible to forget. She met him with an outstretched hand. "Welcome to Greenacres, Mr. Sarbella. Kirk told me last night that you were coming. I haven't seen Kirk all morning, but I suppose he's at the studio. Have you seen him, Bates?" "Not all day, Miss Joan; as you say, perhaps the studio." Joan nodded. "I'll find him, Bates, while you take in Mr. Sarbella's bags. He loses all track of time when he really gets to work, and he's got to make up for three lost weeks."