Cleland, now dressed for luncheon, humming a comic song under his breath and contentedly numbering his latest pencilled pages, heard the tap at his open door, and looked up cheerfully, hoping for Marie Cliff, a pre-prandial dance, and a pretty companion at luncheon. Tragedy entered, wearing the mask of Stephanie Quest. "Hello!" he cried gaily, jumping up and coming toward her. "This is too delightful. Are you coming out to lunch with me, Steve?" "Sit down a moment," she said. But he continued to stand; and she came over and stood beside his desk, resting one hand on it. And, after a moment, lifting her grey eyes to his: "I have borne a great deal from you. But there is an insult which you have offered me to-day that I shall not endure in silence." "What insult?" he demanded, turning red. "Making my studio a rendezvous for you and your—mistress!" He knew what she meant instantly, and his wrath blazed: "It was an accident. I don’t know how you heard of it, but it was pure accident. Also, that is a rotten thing to say——" "Is it! You once told me that you prefer to call a spade a spade! Oh, Jim!—you were _clean_ once. What have you done!" "But it’s a lie—and an absurd one!" "Do you think that of me, too—that I tell lies?" "No. But you evidently believe one." "It is too obvious to doubt——" Her throat was dry with the fierceness of her emotions and she choked a moment. "Who told you?" "I was there." "Where?" "In my bed-room. I had not gone out. I heard the maid tell you I was out motoring. I meant to speak to you—but you have been so—so unfriendly lately.... And then that woman came in!" ... Her grey eyes fairly blazed. "Why do you do this to me?" she cried, clenching both hands. "It is wicked!—unthinkable! Why do you hold me in such contempt?" Her fierce anger silenced him, and his silence lashed her until she lost her head. "Do you think you can offer me such an affront in my own studio because I am really not your sister?—because your name is Cleland and mine is not?—because I was only the wretched, starved, maltreated child of drunken parents when your father picked me out of the gutter! Is that why you feel at liberty to affront me under my own roof—show your contempt for me? _Is_ it?" "Steve, you are mad!" he said. He had turned very white. "No," she said, "but I’m at the limit of endurance. I can’t stand it any longer. I shall go to-night to the man I married and live with him and find a shelter there—find protection and—f-forgetfulness——" Her voice broke but her eyes were the more brilliant and dangerous for the flashing tears: "I know what you and my aunt talked over between you," she said. "You discussed the chances of my developing erratic, unscrupulous, morbid, immoral traits! You were anxious for fear I had inherited them. Probably now you think I have. Think as you please——!" she flashed out through her tears; "you have killed every bit of happiness in me. Remember it some day!"