Despite his assurance, the next day, after a night of horror, she called up a dozen friends, seeking fruitlessly to learn of the woman. She consulted three of her most particular confidantes as to what course she should adopt. All three agreed on absolute resistance. The first said to her: "My dear, treat him as a friend. Be sympathetic! Find out who she is. Point out to him that she is intriguing for his money. Act, not as an enemy, but as an adviser!" The second added: "Pretend to consider the proposition; then ask him for a year's delay, for his sake and for yours, to be sure that it is not a passing infatuation. In a year, especially if there is no opposition, great changes can take place!" The third agreed with the others, with this addition: "In a year he will either grow tired of her, or she will have become his mistress, and he may become thoroughly satisfied with the arrangement. Whatever you do, delay!" At four o'clock, as the last adviser was hurrying out, Massingale entered. She was instantly struck with the intensity of the emotion that consumed him, which laid the telltale shadows of its fatigue in the hollows about his eyes and the stern drawn lines of his mouth. "Before we go any further," she said carefully, "since I am to be sacrificed, may I at least ask you a few questions?" "That is fair!" he said, deceived by her tone into a bounding hope that she would consent. "Are you perfectly sure of this young girl, Harold?" "Absolutely!" "Who is she?" He hesitated a moment. "She is twenty-two; she is from the Middle West; she has been a little on the stage." "And you are sure that she is disinterested?" "Absolutely!" "You are at the age when men are victims of such infatuations!" she said, looking down. "Perhaps I myself have been to blame! If you will wait a year, be sure, positively sure"--she stopped, blushed red, and said rapidly--"I will try to be to you, Harold, all that you want." Even in the tensity of the moment, the incongruity of this unexpected solution struck him as so sublimely ludicrous that he laughed aloud. Also he perceived her maneuver, at once undeceived. She drew herself up, stung to the soul, prey to an anger that swept aside all caution. "Well, no! I will never consent! You shall never have a divorce so long as I can stop it! Go, live with your mistress." "She is not my mistress!" he said, white with anger. "A girl on the stage! You are ridiculous! You will make yourself the laughing-stock of New York, my dear fellow, with your little girl! And you think she loves you? Fool! don't you know what her game is?" "Don't judge all women by yourself, Clara Bayne!" he said between his teeth, giving her her girlhood name. But instantly, digging his nails in his hands, he said in a different tone: "I beg your pardon! I am very irritated, in a very nervous state. I don't want to lose control of myself! Clara, you are too generous, too honest a woman, deliberately to force her to be my mistress!"